


Ordinary World

by boopboop, luninosity



Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Alternative Universe - FBI, Asphyxiation, Case Fic, Comfort Sex, Coming In Pants, Confessions, Consensual Kink, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, FBI Agent Chris, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Handcuffs, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Kissing, Light Bondage, M/M, Magic Tricks, Magic-Users, Magician!Seb, Mind Games, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rescue Missions, True Love, mention of past attempted non-con, mention of past minor character death by magic, mild breathplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-11-02 08:45:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 53,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10941000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boopboop/pseuds/boopboop, https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: The magician’s too attractive. That’s Chris’s first thought, watching. He inches closer. Tells himself it’s his job. Federal agent and all. Special Investigations. Right.





	1. find the lady

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Обычный мир](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12334521) by [merchant_prince](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merchant_prince/pseuds/merchant_prince)



> This one's been so much fun! Um, we'll earn that rating eventually, with the sex, oh yes. There will also be some not super-explicit kidnapping-related violence and torture of a more psychological than physical nature, but not for a few chapters, and we promise comfort and happy endings!
> 
> We will try to give you updates once a week. :-)
> 
> Title from Green Day's "Ordinary World": _what would you wish if you saw a shooting star / in an ordinary world? / I'd walk to the end of the earth and afar / in an ordinary world..._

The magician’s too attractive.

That’s Chris’s first thought, watching him.

Okay, maybe that’s not Chris’s  _ first  _ thought. The first thought contains a lot more incoherent stunned images involving possible future nudity and long legs and those quicksilver hands playing tricks across bare skin.

The  _ too  _ attractive thought comes next. He pauses, frowning. A few passersby bump into him, then glance at his face and his shoulders and his federal agent stance. They ricochet away in various stages of hurry. New York City, home of illusionists. Broadway shows and street performers. Pickpockets and fantasists. Dreams. And Chris’s badge tucked away under his coat: reality.

The street magician laughs, keeps up cheerful patter, flicks cards around on his table. He’s good; he’s attracted a small crowd, not an easy feat in the bustle of New York City. He’s getting someone to pick a card, any card. When he slips it back into the deck he smiles, and the world spins faster for a moment.

Again: too attractive. Disarmingly, distractingly so. An asset when defrauding customers. Chris inches closer. Tells himself it’s his job. Federal agent and all. Special Investigations. Right.

A small piece of his brain reminds him that this, specifically, is not in fact his job. Harassing random street performers--no matter how lovely their eyes are, an elliptical shade of water-grey that tantalizes old artist’s instincts--is  _ not  _ his assignment. No.

He’s in New York City because the man he’s building a case against--a slow, patient, frustrating kind of case, one that irritates Irish-kid Boston-boy fists--is supposedly in New York. Rumor has it that he’s planning something big, some mastermind scheme, some move to control the whole underworld. Of course, rumor also has it that this man, The Magician, is indeed a magician. 

Chris sighs--not aloud--and watches the street performer laugh and merrily divest applauding patrons of their bets. The boy’s very good; Chris knows how forced-choice card-calls work, and he’s impressed despite himself. The current mark picks three of seven cards, eagerly; the boy smiles radiantly and brushes the other four away, but the next one’s a choice of two out of three, and instead of discarding he keeps both, and when the tourist picks one more, the boy tosses it and flips the  _ other  _ card.

Of course it’s the right card. Chris would bet that the mark hasn’t even figured out that the boy could’ve kept or discarded either set, depending on the pick. Steering the choice: exactly where he wants it.

The boy glances up through long eyelashes. Keeps talking, charming the crowd: “...oh, well, but would you like to try again, look, I’ll even make it easier on you, three cards, not seven, simple find-the-lady, sir, just watch my hands…”

His fingers move like water, like silk, in dusky city light. Steel and steam. Pale pavement at sundown. 

Real magic doesn’t exist. The Magician’s not a magician. Rumor, nothing more. Urban legend that lurks around in the air like unfallen rain. Persistent underground mutters and tall tales: _ did you hear, have you heard, she can walk on air, he can make himself invisible, the true practitioners, they can anyway, my cousin’s wife’s sister once saw… _

Chris has never seen anything to make him believe, in his chaotic tumble into rigid government service, that the rumors are true.

Still--

Still, the boy’s hands dance, he could swear they flow through each other once or twice, and for a second--

For a second his battered old heart gives an inexplicable leap. His heart, which’d once believed in childhood fairytales and backyard plays, staged in bedsheet-capes and daydreams.

He’s found himself right beside the boy’s table without noticing the movement. Pale eyes glance up, assessing--Chris could swear they evaluate everything from his coat to his hips, and sparkle flirtatiously. “Feel like trying your luck, sir?”

Sir. In that voice, an enchanted voice, low and lazy and rich as dark molasses, spiced with some undefinable faintest wildness: New York taking a stroll with a fairy-creature. Dressed up in black leather and black boots and a sinful clinging green-blue shirt.

And fairy-creatures shouldn’t exist. He straightens shoulders. Pulls out a twenty. Ignores guilt at getting distracted, not doing his job. Anyway the boy might know something. Magician, right? Surely that makes sense. “Fine. I’m in.”

“Then, by all means...find the lady. Sir.” With a curving smile; and, oh yes, the boy--if he is a boy; his gaze suggests otherwise, practiced walls up behind playfulness, tiny lines at the corners of snowdrop eyes--knows how to entice. Chris swallows hard. Focuses on his hands.

The boy bats those ridiculous eyelashes at him. Shows off: darting cards around one-handed. This should make the answer obvious; Chris is instantly suspicious. Big blue-grey eyes wait expectantly.

Chris looks at the cards. They smirk back: no obvious tells, no bent corners, no ink-smudges. He can’t see any way to fit a sneaky one up that slim sleeve. “Did you lose track, sir?” the boy asks helpfully.

Chris glares. Points. “That one.”

“Let’s see if he’s right.” Elegant fingers flip the card. “Ah, no. Sorry. One more? Better luck?”

And that’s a twenty gone, and he hasn’t had dinner yet, and he’s going to have to call in and explain to Mr Jackson that, no, he hasn’t found any connections, only those blasted rumors again, hushed signs against evil and awed whispers about what The Magician can do--

The boy smiles at him, slim and tempting and dangerous as a stray panther, dressed in onyx leather and glittering rings and stage-performer eyeliner. 

“No,” Chris says too sharply, and turns away. If this is a lead he’s not willing to pursue it. Not with those eyes. The street magician likely knows nothing about The Magician anyway.

He tugs his jacket more closely around him as the night sets in. He walks through the oncoming cold back to his hotel--as nice as the FBI ‘s willing to pay for, which is maybe three steps up from terrible and trying bashfully to be better--and slumps into a seat at the battered bar, which looks like he feels; and he reaches for his wallet, at which point he realizes--

His wallet’s gone.

He’s immediately certain he knows exactly where it is. 

He’s certain, with no proof at all, that it’s in the possession of a street magician with a kitten-innocent smile and demon-fast hands.

The fire escape is shrouded with darkness and Sebastian blends right into it, boots dangling over the edge nine flights up. He’s always been scared of heights, always been attracted to things that make his pulse rocket, and up here he has the perfect view into Special Agent Christopher Evans’ hotel room. The FBI have no idea how to care for their agents at all. He’s staying in a dump. A dive even Sebastian judges as unworthy, and he’s spent more than one night of his life sleeping behind dumpsters. 

Sebastian is, he would like it to be clear, not stalking a federal agent. He’s just curious. Curiosity has always been a bit of a problem for him. Besides, Special Agent Evans most likely wants to put him in handcuffs and throw away the key. In situations like this one, it is always best to know your enemy. 

Not that Special Agent Evans… Christopher… is his enemy. Not yet, at least. He’s just a mark. A mark Sebastian should never have taken. 

He runs his fingers lightly over the edge of a stolen wallet. It’s soft leather and well made. Old though, worn at the edges. Greatly loved. A gift, most likely. Maybe from one of the smiling faces that gaze up at him from a folded photograph inside, dislike and recrimination behind their perfect smiles. 

He considers returning the wallet directly to the FBI - with a note to please ensure their Agents, kind and hardworking and excited by magic, are housed in places that do not serve their gourmet breakfasts out of vacuum sealed boxes, thank you.

It probably wouldn’t go down very well with Special Agent Evans. Embarrassing. Possibly even harmful to his career. His wallet lifted by a street magician. Sebastian doesn’t want that. 

Christopher Evans is, he thinks with a trust in instincts that have never once failed him, a good man. Not a harmless man, not with muscles so clearly built by practical use and not sculpted in a gym and not with palms rough from handling guns. Not harmless, but not cruel.  

If he caught Sebastian, he wouldn’t hurt him. Maybe that’s why he stole his wallet in the first place. Curiosity, and certainty. Not for the money. There’s not even forty bucks tucked into the folds. Sebastian has more money stashed in the lining of his boots, a strict limit imposed on anyone and everyone who walks up to his act. He performs on the streets to delight and entertain, not to rob people blind. Besides, most people can handle losing a little cash without feeling the need to beat on the guy who won it from them. Sebastian is never short of people wanting to try their luck and the money is his from the second the light of a challenge ignites in their eyes. He’s not greedy. When he needs real money he has other sources of revenue to tap into. Less deserving of the money in their wallets and less considerate of the ways they make it. 

Special Agent Evans would likely not approve. Somehow that sits uneasily in Sebastian’s stomach. Uncomfortable longing for approval in the green-blue eyes of a man Sebastian not only doesn’t know, but has stolen from. He’s officially been on his own for too long. 

He slips the wallet into an inside pocket of his jacket and jumps off the edge of the fire escape. 

He doesn’t hit the ground hard, like he should, but catches himself lightly on the bottom level then springs down to the street, bouncing on his toes, balance perfect and practiced. Silent. No one sees him. Not the people on the street just a few feet away and not Special Agent Evans. 

The man sat outside the 24 Hour cafe opposite, he doesn’t see Sebastian either, but Sebastian sees him. Sees him reading the same paper, over and over. He’s not terrible at undercover work and he does turn the page every few minutes but when he gets to the end he just… starts all over again, one eye on the text, the other on the entrance to the hotel. 

Sebastian isn’t the only person to have followed his Special Agent tonight.

 

The following day, Chris stands in the empty apartment--barely worthy of the name, peeling walls and empty cupboards and flickering lights--that belongs to one Jack Benjamin, alias James B. Barnes, alias TJ Hammond, alias Lance Tucker, and probably a whole host of other false identities as well. He glares at the cracked countertops, which ignore him. They’ve no doubt seen worse.

He’s good at his job, dammit. Following leads. Tracking. He’d spent the morning asking idly around: about the boy, about places he’s been seen, about places he might go. A few other street performers, clad in jangling jewelry and waving mystical hands, had suggested a coffee-shop; no honor among magicians, evidently, or they’d only chosen not to provoke Chris’s badge. The boy apparently likes coffee, and orders his under several names at several different places, and pays for multiple boltholes in varying degrees of decent. The Jack Benjamin name had taken a fair amount of legwork and some minor threats to a feisty elderly landlady, and there’s nothing here.

Tired, frustrated, wallet-less, he pokes around the time-worn kitchen. No leads. No clues.

Lance Tucker rents a luxury penthouse suite that seems to be unoccupied save for an extensive bath-product collection. James Barnes buys plums and blueberries from market-folk but doesn’t have an address. TJ Hammond evidently supports a whole family of illegal Eastern European immigrants in a Brooklyn loft, and they’d quivered at Chris’s questions as if he’d come swinging a nightstick and vowing to deport them. No, they didn’t know who was helping them. No, they hadn’t seen his face. They had no money and no resources, promised jobs and immigration assistance had never materialized, but the kind young man had offered a place to stay and sometimes they find money in unexpected places, under floorboards, in the refrigerator, and they’re very sorry but they know nothing more…

Of course they didn’t, even if they did. Chris had sighed, thanked them politely, and given the little girl who’d been peeking inside his coat the banana he’d saved from the slim pickings of hotel breakfast. Her eyes’d lit up with glee.

He’s quite sure that all these young men are one young man, and that that man has his wallet and his identification and his credit cards. He’s also torn between wanting to strangle the boy and--reluctantly, grouchily--liking the person who rescues families with small children, and who hasn’t yet used any of the credit cards.

He wanders back out into the other room; there’s only one. Bare scuffed carpet sprawls out insouciantly in late-morning light. Mocking him: this is a side problem, a diversion, keeping him from his main mission.

Maybe the boy  _ is  _ in league with The Magician.

He’s also starting to wonder whether he’s being followed. He can’t be sure, but he thinks he’s spotted a recognizably bland face and hat at least twice today. Could be coincidence. New York’s a big city. And people with similar interests--magic, illusionists, quirky performance art, the bright tapestried swirls of the sidewalk world--might end up in similar places.

His line of work, his gut, his spine, collectively tingle and tell him it’s not coincidence.

He looks back at a spot of sunshine on the floor, one he’d glanced into a scarce moment before, and blinks, and blinks again. Nope, that’s his wallet. Definitely his: old and time-softened, with the scuff on that corner. Sitting on the dirty carpet where no wallet’d been before.

“Hello?” he asks the empty room full of sunlight.

No answer. No surprise.

“If you’re here,” he tries, “I just want to talk.” About what? About pickpocketing federal agents and subsequent consequences? About any rumors regarding disappeared street people and quiet amassing of power and favors owed? If this boy is shadowing him and trying to distract him, that’d be the stupidest opening question ever.

Somehow he doesn’t think those eyes, that sparkle of genuine playfulness and compassion, would work for a criminal kingpin.

“Do you need money?” He doesn’t have a lot, but he’ll offer if it’s needed. “You didn’t use my credit cards…do you need cash?” Then again, given the multiple living arrangements, money’s not an issue. “Why’d you pick me, anyway?”

Only quiet, spreading out to fill up the space; but not an unfriendly sort of quiet. Listening, maybe. Intent.

When he picks up his wallet, a note flutters out.  _ Thought you’d want this back. And please go have a decent meal. Cafe three blocks west, with the green awnings. Try the chocolate-chip muffins, Special Agent. _

His identification’s still there. Credit cards. Family photos: his mother, siblings, nieces and nephews smile up at him from a creased moment out of time. 

His cash is not only still there but seems to’ve doubled. He considers this, glances out the window--not expecting to find anyone, and he’s right--and says, “Thanks,” to the sunlight.

And then he heads out, leaving the apartment that no one lives in, leaving it to its muted sunshine and solitude; he’s going to go pursue a lead about a pavement artist who’d disappeared inexplicably the week before, whose name’d come up again today as a friend or at least acquaintance of James Barnes, and he’s going to get back to his job.

First he’s going to go buy a chocolate-chip muffin. Because…

Because someone gave his wallet back, and suggested he try something new. 

Sunbeams pool like optimism across his shoulders when he steps outside.

 

Sebastian holds his breath as the door closes and then allows himself to step out into the now empty apartment. He stares at spaces that have just shared occupancy with a stranger for the first time since he has owned them and marvels at the giddy thrill that rises in his chest.

For someone who has spent most of his life running from someone or something, he’s never once entertained even the possibility of wanting to get caught. Of course, no one has ever gotten this close before; one alias away from the truth of who Sebastian is and all of that done without a raised voice or waved gun.  Chris – he’s Chris now: they have shared a space and Sebastian has attempted to see him fed proper food so being on first name terms seems right – is smart. Sebastian does love smart. And kind. Kind to the children Sebastian finds housing for, and the baristas of his favorite coffee shops, and the landlady who hates Sebastian so much but nevertheless tries to keep him out of trouble when she sees him.

Most of the government officials Sebastian has encountered have proven to be quite different. He’s not sure if Chris is a break from the norm, of if he’s just had the worst of the bunch cross his path.

But Chris asked if he needed the money in a voice that suggested he would have gone and found more for Sebastian if he’d said yes. Genuine care. No threats or violence or anger. It’s enough to leave Sebastian a little besotted by the man who would hunt him down over a stolen wallet, then extend a hand of compassion instead of condemnation.

It’s that, more than anything, which tells Sebastian he needs to step away from this. From Chris. From kind eyes and broad shoulders and a worried note in a scotch rough voice. Chris might skirt the edges of his world, might be more aware of the dangers and the darkness than most on the outside, but he’s not part of it. He deserves better than to chase Sebastian any further into it.

There’s just the little problem of Chris’ tail. Sebastian’s tail, by proxy, and someone that neither of them can afford to let report back on wild goose chases across the city and federal agents who are perhaps too soft on people he should not be soft with.

Sebastian can’t leave Chris without warning him. He can’t warn him without drawing him in. Which leaves plan C. Less favorable. Close contact. Lines crossed that he tries to avoid crossing.

He follows the man who follows Chris from his apartment, hiding in plain sight when he can and with a few deftly applied tricks when he can’t, and when a corner turns into a busy cross-section – Chris quietly slipping away into a subway station – Sebastian reaches out, taps Chris’ tail on the shoulder and fixes on his sweetest smile.

Hypnosis is a matter of suggestion. Sebastian is very suggesting, and the idea that not everyone can be hypnotized is, in his experience, inaccurate to say the least. Caught by surprise, almost everyone can be drawn in. This man is no different at all.

Sebastian sends him home with fuzzy memories of an uneventful day and a suggestion to treat himself to takeout and enjoy a nice warm bath, two things he plans on doing himself.


	2. quick-change

“Thank you,” Sebastian says sweetly, “you know, here’s another dollar, can you just give me a twenty and we’ll call it even?” and considers the likelihood of his own survival against brutish fists, just for fun, just in case he gets caught. The clerk--who sits behind the register of a purported convenience store that’s a known front for The Magician’s drug-and-bribery transactions--glares at him. Glares at the money on the counter.

Sebastian waits. Smiles innocently. The man ponders this evidence of harmlessness, hands him a twenty, grunts. “Go away.”

“Thanks.” He’s just made an extra ten bucks, because some people don’t pay attention to the actual number of bills being passed around during transactions. And he can do this at a few more locations, and have enough to leave in the hands of deserving acquaintances around the city.

He ducks out the door into daylight, sticks hands in his pockets, is mildly disappointed at the ease of that sleight of hand. No challenge. Heart rate utterly even. And it’s not as if he wants to run for his life, not as if he enjoys having to rely on certain tricks of suggestion and influence, but nevertheless: _so_ easy.

He wonders where Special Agent Evans is this afternoon. Chris had been patiently talking to pavement artists that morning, gathering information about the one who’d gone missing, and had gone back to the same cafe for lunch. Sebastian’s a bit proud of that. He wants to check in on Chris, though; he pauses on the street corner, considering.

He doesn’t have the time to babysit Chris every second. He has other people to provide for. A few places to stop by, to casually chat about vanished friends and acquaintances who’ve suddenly closed up shop out of fear. Chris Evans is a federal agent with combat training--

And Chris is, his heart informs him, one of _his_ people now. Kind, generous, bright, fascinated by magic: a challenge, and one that’s worth protecting.

Fascinated by magic, he thinks, not crossing as the light changes. Stepping instead out of the way, propping a shoulder against a sun-warmed wall. Fascinated by magic, and here on assignment.

He looks at one hand, at his fingertips, idly. He looks normal. He looks like anyone else--well, not _anyone_ else; Sebastian’s perfectly aware that some people find him attractive, even memorable, though in his own head he remains a shy scared twelve-year-old kid with an accent, chubby from overindulgence in cheap American fast food. Either way he looks ordinary. Human.

If sometimes-- _sometimes_ \--he can walk unnoticed in jeans and a leather jacket through an evening gala, or coax an easy mark or two closer by silently suggesting that they come near, or step off a fire escape and land with soundless precision exactly where he’s told his feet to go…

He’s not even sure it works. If there’s an it. If it’s not coincidence. If he’s not making up fairy-stories in his head. Sometimes people do what he says, when he focuses hard-- _most_ times, points out his beleaguered conscience; when was the last time you tried to influence someone when it _didn’t_ work?--and sometimes he’s easily distracted and trips over cracks in the sidewalk, which causes _everyone_ to look at him.

That one’d happened just last week. He rubs an elbow ruefully, remembering. Magic. Him. If he is he’s hardly a legendary sorcerer.

He does not think about the reason he’d run from home. The other person who’d believed he, Sebastian, could in fact do magic.

He’s spent a long time avoiding precisely those thoughts.

Some shouting erupts from the convenience store. Someone must’ve done some math. And he’s still standing on the street corner, wondering whether Chris Evans would like an illusionist’s bouquet of paper roses, whether that’d earn another delighted smile.

He decides that escape is the better part of valor and ducks into a crowd without looking, which turns out to be either a planet-sized mistake or the mysterious good fortune of his maybe-magic at work, because he runs squarely into a solid chest and a lot of muscle.

The muscle belongs to Special Agent Chris Evans, clad today in an enchantingly too-small red shirt and jeans, who stares at him, mouth dropping open a fraction.

“Um,” Sebastian says, “hi, you’re welcome about the cafe recommendation, by the way, I’ll just be going--”

Chris’s hand grabs his wrist. Chris’s voice, low and authoritative and rumbling in a way that makes Sebastian’s knees go treacherously weak, says, “Is that shouting because of you?”

This is not the question he’d expected. “Ah…yes?”

“Okay.” Chris keeps the hand around his wrist. Sebastian scowls at it, tries not to be turned on--he’s always liked powerful men with kind eyes; the combination’s lethal, and he can’t afford distractions so it’s been a while--and opens his mouth to _suggest_ that Chris let him go, at which point the convenience store clerk, who has more weaponry up his sleeve than one might normally expect, pops out of the doorway and shouts, “You!”

Chris looks at Sebastian. Sebastian looks back. Other city-dwellers, having the self-preservation instinct of rats on a sinking ship, scatter.

Chris yells at the doorway, “Did he pull somethin’ over on you, too?”

“Did I _what--_ ”

“Shut up. --Don’t worry, it’ll get taken care of, my boss wants to talk to him first, something about Willy the Fish’s new Cadillac--” Chris rather alarmingly well impersonates an Italian mafia thug. Sebastian knows exactly what happened to Willy’s car, and who perpetrated that one; not his doing, but he’s vastly entertained by the choice of a ferret in place of the promised prostitute.

He contributes pathetically, “I didn’t do that one, I swear!” and Chris shakes his arm with overblown menace.

“Ow!”

“Seriously?” But the grip loosens, which is both nice and a bit worrying in terms of Chris actually doing the job of capture.

“Sorry, I’m fine--”

Chris narrows eyes at him, shouts, “We’ll stop by and see you guys later and discuss compensation--” and drags Sebastian off around a corner and into the closest taxi, giving terse directions back to the dreadful FBI hotel, not letting go. Sebastian stares at the hand, and could probably get away without further incident despite the moving taxi, but--

But he’s curious. And Chris is one of his people. And decided to allay suspicion by acting--surprisingly well, too--instead of flashing the badge or turning him over and ignoring the consequences.

As conciliation he offers, “About the car, that was because the girl he demanded wasn’t actually a prostitute. A dancer, yes, but she doesn’t do more than that. Her brother decided to defend her honor.”

“So you did do it, on their behalf?”

“No!” At which point he realizes Chris’s lips’re twitching: trying not to smile. “Which you knew. Unfair of you, Special Agent. Thank you, though. I’d’ve been fine, but--thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Chris keeps the hand wrapped around his wrist all the way through the hotel lobby and the creaking elevator ride, into the dilapidated hotel room. Sebastian decides not to mention the spying through the window episode. He’s still more intrigued than alarmed; he can get himself out if necessary, and hadn’t he been thinking the day’d been too easy?

“Okay,” Chris says, crossing arms, eyebrows trying hard to be menacing, shoulders doing marginally better. “Who are you, why are you stalking me, and what do you know about The Magician? Talk.”

 

Winter blue eyes widen in shock and that’s the the only warning he gets before lightning fast limbs make a frantic dart for the exit. Chris, with memories of those street performances, is ready.

“Okay,” he’s able to get one cuff around a slim wrist before his quicksilver thief makes it more than a few steps, “we’ll do it your way.” Surprisingly, he’s not met with much resistance. Flight settling into curious submission, and he gets the feeling that the boy is letting him fasten the other end of the cuff to a sturdy dresser edge. There’s no shouting or fighting or manic wriggling you would expect when dragging someone to your hotel room and breaking out the handcuffs. Not that Chris knows this from experience, just-

He takes a step back and the boy holds out his uncuffed hand. Turns over his palm, the key to the cuffs nestled within it. “You dropped this,” he says, flashing a winsome smile.

“I got another set,” Chris threatens. “We can see how light-fingered you are then.”

“Is this standard procedure for everyone the FBI detains? Aren’t you going to read me my rights?”

It’s really hard not to smile in the face of the sweetly sarcastic coyness being aimed his way. Chris shakes himself and thinks of missing children, murdered parents, vulnerable people vanishing without a trace. Now, it is easier. “You’re not under arrest. Yet.”

The boy cocks his head to one side and a dark curl falls across his forehead. Chris really wants to reach over and brush it back to join its friends. “So, this would be false imprisonment, then?”

“Just answer the question.” Chris frowns at the way he tugs his wrist, a shadow of pain flicking across his face. He was careful with the cuff, he knows he was. Still. There is pain in those eyes and he has put it there. “Who are you? What’s your name? And don’t tell me it’s Jack Benjamin or James Barnes or Lance Tucker or any of your other aliases. I want your real name.”

He’s standing a lot closer than he should be; in reach of those long, dangerously quick limbs and in hope of a glimpse of a cuffed wrist. No bruises, no broken skin.  Chris takes a breath, lets it out.

“My name is Chris. Which you know, since you stole my wallet. Thanks for returning it, by the way.”

After a moment, the boy says, “Sebastian,” then blinks and leans back, almost surprised that he’s spoken.

“Sebastian,” Chris repeats. “No last name?”

“Just Sebastian. Adds to the mystery.” He waves a hand theatrically, pausing to glare at the cuff hindering his performance. “I did think about adding ‘the Magnificent’ but that seems a bit pretentious, don’t you think?”

Pretentious? Perhaps. Not entirely inaccurate. Up close, away from the distractions of the street, Sebastian really is exquisite. Chris doesn’t even consider the possibility that he is lying about his name. It suits him.

He steps back. Clears his throat. “Why are you following me, Sebastian?”

“I could ask you the same thing, Special Agent,” Sebastian’s smile edges wider. He doesn’t look like a man in handcuffs and being questioned by an FBI Agent. He looks like he’s at a bar, just waiting for someone to slide over to him and offer up hopeful requests to buy him a drink. “I ran into you, not the other way around.”

“Right,” Chris laughs, “because you were conning someone else and got caught.”

“I was not conning anyone!” Sebastian looks affronted, feathers ruffled and ego offended, and Chris wants to offer up apologies until he thinks about his own stolen wallet. “I’m not a con man.”

“Of course not: you’re a thief.”

“I’m an illusionist,” pale eyes narrow. He’s touching on a tender subject here. Experience tells him to press harder. Compassion stays his hand. He brought Sebastian here because he couldn’t leave him at the mercy of angry, weapon-wielding henchmen. To protect him. To keep him safe, for reasons he’s not completely sure of himself, but probably include homeless children given shelter and concerned suggestions of muffins and warmth.

Instead of outright denying the accusation about theft, he notices, Sebastian’s lips pull into a tight, unhappy line.

Chris softens his stance. Tries to look less like a man who can bench press himself and then some. “I don’t care about the wallet, or whatever you did to that guy. I just want some answers.”

“And if I don’t give them to you?” There’s curiosity in the way Sebastian’s eyes track him up and down, trepidation, too. A silent question in his voice: was I safer with a man who wanted to break all my fingers than I am with you?

Chris says, “I’m not going to hurt you, if that is what you’re afraid of,” and means, ‘I’m not going to let anyone else hurt you, either’.

The fear drops from Sebastian’s eyes. “Then I don’t really think you’re cut out for this conversation, Special Agent Evans.”

And Chris doesn’t take his eyes off him, he knows he doesn’t, and he doesn’t see anything happen at all, but -–

Sebastian suddenly holds up the handcuffs, loose and dangling from a single finger, and Chris would have seen him pick the lock, he would have, but he didn’t.

Sebastian tries to run, again. Chris follows him, again. This time, when he throws his arms around a fleeing body, he feels warm flesh and supple muscle and soft, smooth skin and –-

Nothing. He has just an armful of leather jacket and air and an empty hotel room to match his confusion.

 

Sebastian makes it to the end of the hall near the cranky old elevators, and stops, heart slowing. No one else is around; the elevators ignore him with tired disdain. He looks at them, looks down the hall, slumps against the wall. Lets out a breath, and feels ridiculous.

He’d run. He’d seen the sympathy in Chris’s eyes, had felt the strength and warmth of Chris’s body against his, and--

Okay, he tells himself. Five seconds of panic at unanticipated desire and closeness and kindness. You can have that.

He lets the wall hold him up. Breathes. In. Out.

He’s not scared of Chris, not much anyway. That’s a large part of why he’d run: the desire to stay.

Chris had looked at him with concern. Had so obviously been checking his wrist for real hurt. Had promised to _not_ hurt him.

His own brain and the judgmental elevators tell him he should be embarrassed. He’s starting to be.

He’s also a bit cold without his jacket. His shirt’s too thin, long-sleeved but fashionably light. He makes a face at himself.

He’d not simply run because Chris had been kind. Other reasons. That name-drop. The demand for answers. Chris is on the trail of a dangerous man, and Sebastian doesn’t know Christopher Evans, doesn’t know whether this agent will be an ally or a hindrance in his own personal fight. Sebastian has reasons for targeting The Magician’s operations with casual petty theft and annoyances, reasons that stretch back to a terrified night and a home that’d no longer been safe and a flight into darkness.

He’s been hiding in plain sight for a very long time. He’s helped other people when and as he can. But he’s not fighting in the open. He’s staying out of the way.

Plus, there’s that other reason for not fighting outright. The bloodier one. The one that makes him shiver with memory and tuck his hands away.

And he wonders, as he occasionally does, what plans that man had for younger him. This is always a fruitless endeavor: he doesn’t know. He can guess, but he doesn’t _know_.

He’s unsure whether Chris Evans has noticed the frantic slip of magic with the second cuffs. He’d been desperate; he’d pleaded with his own wrists and with the sleek metal atoms and elements, had asked to be let go, and then he had been free, and he’d run.

Might’ve been simply adrenaline and sweat and flexibility and Chris not closing the cuffs tightly enough. Might’ve been.

Chris Evans asked for information. Sebastian absolutely has some, both first- and second-hand. He knows too many people who’ve been swallowed up by that darkness: meetings they’ve never returned from, promises extracted, promises broken. He knows about his own family.

He knows about the sensation he’d had then: the first time he’d met a certain man, going by a certain epithet. When icy cold had crawled down his spine, and he’d blinked and thought he’d seen a blood-black miasma swirling around the shape beside him. Fanciful. A boy’s imagination. He’d always liked magic.

Chris Evans likes magic.

Chris had tried to look harmless. Tried to hunch himself in and make those muscles smaller and nonthreatening. What kind of federal agent--?

A good one, says his heart. A good man.

Sebastian sighs. Tells the elevators, “Such help you are,” and shoves himself upright. Chris hasn’t left the room; he’d’ve known.

All this hotel’s guest quarters are old enough and cheap enough to have locked connecting doors. Sebastian slips into the one next door, neatly picks the lock, takes a deep breath, flips it open. Lounges in the doorway: assuming the appearance of nonchalance.

Chris Evans, alerted by the sound, has already spun that way; his hand twitches--a weapon, likely--but his eyes fill with relief. “You came back--”

“You intrigue me. And you have my jacket.”

“Oh…sorry…” Chris snags it from the bed, tosses it to him. “How’s your--”

“Wrist? Utterly unhurt.” He pulls the jacket on. Armor. In at least two ways. “You said a name. We should talk. We might have mutual interests. Please don’t try the handcuffs again; as fun as that is with you, it won’t work.”

“Mutual interests?” Chris sits down on the bed, makes a show of holding up hands. His shirt’s slightly undone; Sebastian glimpses a hint of tattoo-ink. Stories written over skin. Even more intriguing. “And, yeah, no, think I’ve learned that lesson. But you did come back.”

“The Magician.” He watches Chris’s ocean-floor eyes change: the focus of an agent on a case. “I know…something about how he works. And I know he’s been collecting people for some time. People no one’ll miss, people who maybe have a--a hint of talent for--a reputation, only rumors--but Charlie, that pavement artist? You could touch one of his chalk drawings and hear the sea, people said.”

“Magic’s not real,” Chris says, though this sounds more like an automatic dismissal than a belief.

“Real or not, that seems to be the common thread. Believe me or don’t. But if you--did you hear that?”

“No.” But Chris gets up anyway, tense, poised, moving to stand beside him. “What?”

Sebastian doesn’t have to answer, because they both hear it now: purposeful footsteps, crashing down the hall. Crashing into their door--

The man is unfamiliar, large, and professionally trained but obviously not gainfully employed, a stereotypical thug if Sebastian’s ever seen one. He snarls, “You, come with me,” and it’s not clear which of them he means, but Chris snaps, “He’s not going anywhere,” and steps in front of Sebastian like a heroic human shield, earnest and good-intentioned.

The man growls and lumbers in. Sebastian promptly flattens himself against a wall, thinks fiercely, _I’m not here I’m not here you don’t see me I’m a table--_

And vicious callused hands get briefly puzzled, as if trying to work out where the other target’s gone, but then give up and go right past him and lunge for Chris.

Who doesn’t pull a gun, probably trying for no fatalities; this is stupid, because he’s losing, he’s strong but not that dirty a fighter, and--

And just tried to save Sebastian, who doesn’t need saving, thanks--

He swears under his breath, and stops being furniture, and dives in to help.

 

Pulling a weapon in close quarters is never the best idea, especially when there are civilians - perhaps not innocent, but certainly undeserving of being shot - close by. Or there were. Chris ducks under a meaty fist, his ears still ringing from a blow already landed, and looks around for Sebastian.

No sign of him. That’s good. That’s sensible. Smart. Sebastian can look after himself. Chris is relieved and distracted and a swipe at his rib is only a glancing blow, but it winds him nonetheless. He goes down to one knee, vulnerable and open to attack.

“You’re not really here for him, are you?” Chris’ heart sinks at the sound of that voice. Above him, his hulking attacker grunts inarticulately and makes a move towards Sebastian, who is still here, dammit, and either dumber than Chris thought, or putting himself in danger to save Chris.

The latter, almost certainly.

Taking advantage of the shift in attention, Chris drops all the way down and rolls out from beneath the behemoth. He’s up on his feet again just in time to see their attacker faceplant on the carpet, his pants around his knees and his belt swinging from one of Sebastian’s hands.

“What-“ Chris asks as an outraged howl bounces around the room. That’s not English. It sounds like the language whispered between frightened family members as Chris patiently tried to pry Sebastian’s location out of them. Eastern European. And while he doesn’t understand what is being shouted, Sebastian clearly does.

He takes one look at Chris, at the swearing, struggling threat already off the floor and moving back into action, and dives headfirst through the open window.

“Hey!” Chris shouts, worried for Sebastian’s safety when they are so high off the ground floor; irritated as well, because how many times is this kid going to run off on him?

A shot pings past his ear.

Chris dives behind the bed.

Right. Decision time. If Sebastian is working with The Magician then Chris’ cover is already blown. Taking this asshole down, arresting him… well, he’s not going to lose anything he hasn’t already lost.

If Sebastian isn’t working for The Magician, then Chris stands a chance of continuing things as they are. Making an arrest now and identifying himself would kill that chance, and potentially Sebastian as well, if word gets out of fraternization between him and a federal agent.

So the question he has only a split second to answer: does he trust Sebastian?

Yes. Simply: yes.

Another shot sends his pillow exploding into a cloud of lanky feathers and musty stuffing. Chris swears, then under the cover of raining bedding, dives right out of the window himself.

He doesn’t fall far. Right. Fire escape.

And, his feet already on the ground and eating up sidewalk: Sebastian.  Another few seconds and he’ll be out of Chris’ reach once again.

He might not be a performer, or an illusionist, as Sebastian calls himself, but he’s got several years of gymnastics under his belt and a decent idea of what his body can and cannot do. He grabs hold of the railing, swings his legs over the side and drops down a whole level just as a furious red face leans out of the window and screams more of those foreign curses at him.

Mentally wincing at the sheer amount of paperwork this is going to create, Chris makes his plans.

Stop Sebastian from escaping, again.

Disable an Angry Henchman without revealing himself as a federal agent.

Stop said henchman from harming anyone while on his rampage.

Try not to get shot in the process.

He thinks he can maybe manage three out of the four, and he knows without question which he is willing to sacrifice.

The alley below is the perfect place to finish this. In the confined space of the hotel room, caught off guard as he was, Chris was outmatched. He can admit that.

Now, he knows what he needs to do.

He’s down three levels and mercifully free of bullet holes when the problem hits.

The fire escape is as old and sorrowful as the hotel, and the impact of a fleeing body proves too much for one of the railings. It gives way, and Chris tumbles head first over the edge.

He has time to throw his arms up, terror and panic lacing through him as an expectation of a landing he won’t be walking away from rushes up to meet him in the face of grey asphalt, then-

He jerks to a painful stop.

Sebastian - who had been down on the street and practically to safety - is now on the fire escape, both hands wrapped around Chris’ ankle.

“You were supposed to let him follow me!” And then something else, a curse in that same language. More exasperated than threatening. Sebastian came back for him. Sebastian saved his life.

Chris just about has the wits about him to say, “Nice catch,” when his eyes widen in horror and a looming shadow draws up above them.

Hanging upside down over the edge of a fire escape leaves him no room at all to stop what is happening. He shouts out in warning and Sebastian is so fast, so good at not being where he needs to not be that Chris thinks for a second that he’s going to be okay.

He’s not okay.

Sebastian’s head snaps up a moment before a large, furious hand tangles in his hair and slams him against the metal barrier.

“No!” He sees Sebastian go limp – sees the blood, oh god that’s a lot of blood – just as the saving grip on his ankle loosens and he falls again.

This time, he is ready.

As Sebastian lets go, he grabs hold of the railing below and ignores the jarring pain in his shoulders as he uses the grip to right his momentum. He’s got a lot of strength in his arms and shoulders, and he uses it, pulling himself up until he can brace his heels on the railing and swing himself up. By the time he’s reached the level above, there’s a beefy arm wrapped around Sebastian’s throat. He’s conscious, but barely. A human shield for a bloodthirsty brute, squirming and struggling in a dazed, weakened panic. No tricks this time, just frightened eyes and blood and a screaming in Chris’ head as every protective fiber of his being flares into overdrive.

Enough of this.

Chris draws his weapon.

“Let him go. Now.” There’s no room for misinterpreting the threat. Chris will shoot. The calm surety of that is the perfect counterbalance to the frantic demands of _save him save him_ that ricochet around his heart.

Henchman sees it, too. “I only want this one,” he says, squeezing his arm and drawing a soft sound of pain from Sebastian’s parted lips.

“Tough shit,” Chris snaps. “He’s mine.” He doesn’t mean it _that_ way, of course not. But the words sound right in his mouth.

Hesitation this time. Less certainty of victory when, “If you shoot me, you’ll hit him,” is flung back.

Chris lets his anger settle into a nasty smile. “No,” he says with conviction, “I won’t.”

Clearly it works. A second’s pause, and then Sebastian is being thrown into his arms. Chris is there, waiting to engulf him in a protective cocoon. The fire escape trembles violently as their attacker flees, smart enough not to test how unwavering Chris’ resolve to protect Sebastian has become.

The gun goes back into its holster and his arms wrap around Sebastian, holding him carefully. “I got you,” Chris promises.


	3. French drop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they talk, and trust each other.

Sebastian’s scared.

He’s not used to being scared. Not like this.

Shaken. Dizzy. Unnerved. He doesn’t get hurt. He can’t recall the last time he’s gotten hurt. His head’s sharp and painful and he can’t feel the world, can’t reach out and be caught, can’t find the shapes and patterns the way he normally can--when he tries his head shrieks in warning--

“I got you,” Chris is saying, “Sebastian, Sebastian, look at me, try to focus--”

Chris sounds scared too. And Chris is a federal agent. So that’s not good.

Blood’s in his eye. World blurred with red. Off-balance, indistinct. He hasn’t _lost_ that eye--

No. No, he can see. It hurts. But _everything_ hurts, his skull and his throat and the sick sensation in the pit of his stomach--

His knees argue about being upright. Chris is holding him.

He _doesn’t_ get hurt. He doesn’t even get sick. He’d fallen off a hotel balcony once, distracted by a kitten on the roof. Landed in a convenient pile of foam rubber in a dumpster, that time.

 _This_ time--

Chris had drawn a gun. Guns aren’t--Sebastian doesn’t like guns, because--

He’s aware of how disjointed his thoughts are. Shock. Confusion. But certainty as well: Chris had sounded sure, holding that gun leveled at their attacker. Chris would have hit his target. Would’ve kept Sebastian safe.

Chris says his name again, sounding a lot like someone determinedly keeping a lid on panic, supporting him as they huddle on a broken-edged fire escape above city pavement. “Can you talk to me? You know what happened?”

Sebastian the Magnificent, he thinks, and remembers teasing Chris over handcuff keys; and he takes a deep breath and demands that his body stop trembling. “Yes. Sorry. How--how bad is it?”

“I don’t know yet.” Chris touches his face, tilts his head--fresh pain spikes up like iron lances, and Sebastian bites his lip against a cry--and looks more worried. “That’s a lot of blood…”

Their fire escape chooses this moment to groan alarmingly.

Chris mutters some blunt single-syllable profanities. “We need to get off this thing. Can you--”

“I’ll manage.” He swipes an arm across his face. In truth he’s not convinced, but he’s nothing if not good at bravado. “Can you jump from here?”

After some deliberation, Chris ends up on the pavement below, stumbling on the landing but recovering and reaching up. Sebastian puts a hand on the railing, wobbles, reaches out with blank stunned senses: _help, something, please--_

Might be his imagination, but he thinks the old battered metal curls up briefly like smoke to pat his hand. To stretch a coil downward where a coil hadn’t been before: decorative loops that must’ve always been there, unnoticed.

“Don’t jump,” Chris calls up. “Sit down and kind of…fall…and I’ll catch you, I swear.” He throws a glance over his shoulder; time, Sebastian understands. More henchmen who might be lumbering their way. “You can do this, you’ll be fine, I’m right here.”

“Of course I can do this,” Sebastian retorts, and slips over rust and wrought-iron and into Chris’s steadying hands, which close on his hips and then on his shoulders. He staggers, legs deciding to fold up for a minute; Chris gathers him close, arms back in supportive place. “Thank you, though.”

“Yeah, don’t. Not when you--not for this.” Chris uses a sleeve to blot redness away. Swears again. “I have an emergency kit--back in the room, shit--okay, you need a hospital.”

“We can’t--!” He shoves himself upright. Presses a hand over the cut. “We can’t. They’ll look there--they know I’m hurt--and going back to your room is presently out of the question--”

“You need a doctor--”

“He has people _everywhere_ , Chris.” And he’s vulnerable like this. _They’re_ vulnerable like this. “New plan. You found the Lance Tucker penthouse; you recall the address?” It’s not far. Walkable.

“Yeah, but we can’t just stroll in there, you’re covered in blood!” Despite the argument, Chris checks on him with gentle hands, lifting Sebastian’s own to peek at angry split skin, flattening strong palms over the cut. “And if I found that one so will other people.”

“Let me worry about the first part.” He blinks stickiness out of eyelashes. His mouth tastes like old copper and fear. “And if they think it’s the first obvious alias no one’ll be watching. I can’t go anywhere official, Chris, please.”

Chris grumbles, and Chris looks mutinous, and Chris swears more in a fascinatingly irritated Boston accent; but Chris scoops him into the circle of one firm arm, and they fade into alleyway grimness. Sebastian focuses on keeping one foot in front of the other and his head from exploding, trusting his federal agent to guide them; he keeps up the low-level persistent internal monologue of _nothing remarkable, nothing to see, wouldn’t you rather look over there_ that gets them across a city block and into a lavish lobby without incident, unless that’s simply ordinary New York disinterest at work. The bored desk clerk never unglues himself from his phone; Chris Evans does want to ask the question, eyebrows going up in an inquisitive glance at Sebastian’s face, but the glance transmutes to apprehension. “Sebastian?”

“Stop talking,” Sebastian says hazily, meaning to add more about distractions and difficulties, but a fresh wave of pain swamps his reply. He’s leaning on Chris more. “Just get me up to the room. It’ll be safe.”

“No such thing,” Chris mutters, but half-carries him into the penthouse with the ease of someone who’s got experience with heroic rescues, and sets Sebastian’s aching self on the bed with exquisite care. “Okay. You stay put. I’m gonna see what you’ve got--”

Sebastian, sitting gingerly on the never-used bed in the uninhabited sprawl of luxury apartment, watches his federal agent disappear into the bathroom. Chris came here with him. Chris listened to him. Chris caught him when he was scared. He can’t recall the last time that’s happened. He feels that shiver down his spine again. The flinch that’d driven him out to lurk by Chris’s elevators. Newborn inexplicable wanting.

They really do need to talk. He’s made that choice. He’s made it more than once, over and over, in the short time they’ve been aware of each other’s presence. He won’t tell Chris everything--some pieces he can’t even explain, and he’s aware he’ll sound insane--but Chris needs to know that he can trust Sebastian, that they’re on the same side. They can help each other; Chris has resources and authority, and Sebastian knows this town and the street folk and…

…and The Magician himself. More or less. In fuzzy memory. Which evidently is enough to make him a target.

Thinking this much is making his head hurt more. He lives by instinct, normally.

This penthouse is expensive but worth it: support for a nonexistent entitled wealthy persona. He lets friends stay here on occasion, but not lately. Come to think of it, he’s not heard from a few of those friends since…

Another spike of brilliant hurt makes him wince; he complains, “yes, thank you, no stress, got it,” in Romanian, right as Chris comes in with towels and what looks like a hasty bandage made of bath-product cotton-fluff. Those heroic shoulders pause, concerned.

“I remember English,” Sebastian grumbles. “Mostly. What on earth are you holding?”

Chris waves the bathroom cup at him, making viscous liquid wobble and cling. “Some of your bath stuff had arnica and larkspur in it. Good for healing. Blood clotting. Hold this.”

“Why do you know that? Do they teach herb-lore in federal agent school?” He accepts the other towel as Chris dabs the damp one over bloodied skin. “Is there--ow--is there a botanical first aid course?”

“Yeah, it’s called hiking in the woods behind my mom’s house. Don’t move, this is going to sting.”

Sebastian succeeds in not moving. Hisses several extremely nasty things in three different languages instead.

“Sorry,” Chris apologizes, genuinely meaning it, from tone and expression. “This isn’t as bad as I thought, I don’t think you need stitches, but we should keep an eye on it. And you. If you feel dizzy…”

“Feel free to keep your eyes on me, then.” He bats the one not covered by a new towel; pathetic dancing on the edge of quicksand, but he feels more like himself when Chris snorts. “So you _are_ okay.”

Yes and no; the shock’s wearing off and he’s feeling as if he might’ve overreacted. A cut. People get them. Still here. No permanent maimings or eyeball loss. Not even stitches, apparently.

Chris is back to looking concerned. “Still with me? Not checking out?”

“You’re the one who said I’d be fine. Are you?”

“Me?”

“You fell off a fire escape.”

“I didn’t, because you caught me.” They sit on the bed gazing at each other, at that. Chris’s fingertips are wet with blood and water and makeshift healing ointment. The damp towel on the floor, slowly seeping water into the penthouse rug, brushes Sebastian’s right boot. Chris’s eyes are so close and so wide that every stripe of color’s visible, sweet deep shades of multifaceted blue. He has faint freckles on his cheekbones, and they catch the light.

Sebastian, quietly, offers, “We should talk.” Chris isn’t his to gaze at. Chris is part of his mission now, yes; part of the people he’ll steal for and give to and put himself in harm’s way to protect. But Chris is a compassionate man and a federal agent. A man who stands in sunlight and wears a badge and exists in a readily explicable world. Good and bad, criminals and lawmen, a justice system in place. No room for ambiguity.

No room for odd stray illusions and wisps of mystery. Even if Chris Evans has looked at him with delight, across a row of cards.

They can help each other. That’ll be all. That’s what they’ve been doing: helping each other.

But Chris says back, “Yeah, we should,” and doesn’t say it like a man who doesn’t care. “Are you even up to talking? Your throat…”

“Nearly undamaged. Not the worst part of today. You didn’t answer me; are you all right?”

“Sure,” Chris answers, distracted-sounding, automatic. His shirt’s ripped and dirty from the fire escape, Sebastian notices, and one palm’s scraped; but he looks every inch a man prepared to throw himself between his companion and danger if necessary. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Only one?”

“Depends. You planning to stay put long enough to answer?”

Sebastian holds out both wrists, makes a hasty grab for his towel-compress, sticks out just one hand to underscore the mostly-teasing point: “Are you planning to cuff me again? We both know how that ends.”

“You probably could, too, even with--” Chris flinches at the reminder of injury, cuts himself off, starts over. “Okay. Let’s talk. No cuffs, no tricks, no interruptions. That guy back there was after you, not me. You know why I’m here. I’ll help you if you need help, you have my word, I swear. But I need to know. What does The Magician want with you? What do you know?”

 

The question hangs heavy in the air as Sebastian visibly debates the merits of answering. A part of Chris wants nothing more than to wrap him in the luxuriously fluffy throw that hangs over the foot of the bed. Wants to comfort and reassure and protect. It's overruled by the more rational, trained part of him. The one that points out that he can't protect Sebastian from anything he doesn't know about.

The ebb of blood is now sluggish and slow. Still bleeding, but then head injuries are notorious for that. Sebastian will be alright. That's what matters. But the more Chris looks at the injury the easier it is to hear the shadow of panic that still echoes from his frantic plea to not be taken to a hospital. Then he thinks of housed families frightened of any authority figures and that lilting, lovely language he had spoken only minutes ago.

Of course.

Aching with compassion for what has to be an impossible situation, Chris fills in the silence with a promise. “If there is something you're afraid of… I'm not immigration. I don't… That doesn't have to come up. I'm not about to report you. If you're not--” --here legally.

Sebastian looks up, startled. “Oh no,” he says, “I'm legal. Now at least. If you're going to offer me anything, shouldn't it be immunity?”

“Street magicians aren't exactly my remit,” Chris laughs. “If NYPD want to take issue with it that's on them.”

The bloody towel is lowered into Sebastian's lap. He raises fingers from the opposite hand and tentatively touched the wound, wincing as he does. The bleeding has mostly stopped. Now Chris can see the damage without anything obscuring the view. The skin around Sebastian's eye is already bruising. In a day or so it will be livid and angry and Chris is twitching with the urge to hunt down its perpetrator and hand out some bruises of his own.

It's clear Sebastian hasn't found his footing yet. Attempts at flirtation feel weak and illusionary and his shoulders are hunched. After seeing how easily Sebastian can fade out of sight when he wants to, Chris thinks there is something of an internal battle going on to do the same now. Ultimately, Sebastian's courage prevails. Bruised and hurting, he meets Chris' gaze squarely.

“I don't know him. Not in the sense of working for him or spending time with him.”

“Could you identify him in a line up?”

Sebastian shakes his head, “You'll never be able to make that happen.” He sounds… Not dejected. Bitter, almost. Somehow, this is personal for Sebastian, despite his claims otherwise. Chris caught the ‘now’ in his comment about being here legally. He's not stupid. He can read between the lines. At some point in his life, Sebastian has been vulnerable to some very bad things, and that vulnerability has clearly been taken advantage of.

Chris tries extra hard to look like someone who doesn't want to do the same. “I dunno,” he tries for gently encouraging, “give me some credit.”

Sebastian levels him with a distinctly unimpressed frown. “If the FBI were taking this seriously then why are you the only one here? A banker goes missing and all of Quantico show up. Dozens of people vanish from the street and they send one agent?”

The observation hits hard. Sebastian doesn't sound confrontational, but he's equally not confident in the results they can deliver together. Truth then. Chris sighs, “You're right. It is just me. For now at least. I'm actually using my vacation to do this. Not that I have much. Vacation that is. I’m on the Harry Gold case.”

Sebastian actually snorts and rolls his eyes. “Of course you are.”

The rest is unspoken, leveled in an expression that is as secretly wounded as it is indignant. A rich, famous magician goes missing and people show up in droves to solve the mystery. A man like Gold has nothing beyond a trade in common with a girl who dances with fire on a street corner, or a boy who flips cards into birds and back again. Chris is the only person who has looked at the bigger picture and questioned the finer details. He's made a good case for his hunch, but resources are stretched. So he's here. Looking for answers. Looking for proof he can take to the powers that be. He says so to Sebastian.

“I had a theory. I'm following it up. Help me, Sebastian. Help me prove they're connected and I can have the full force of the FBI on that fucker’s doorstep in twenty minutes.”

Sebastian hesitates, biting his lip, biting back the words Chris can see forming in his head. Then he says, "It was a rumor, at first. People go missing all the time and no one looks for them. Hardly anyone notices, really." His expression is wistful and sad. No one notices, he says. Sebastian did. "There are rumors, of course. There have always been rumors. Every community has their superstitions. I tried not paying attention to them. Not at first. Figured I had enough to deal with already that I didn't need to go looking for trouble. Then…then I heard a name."

"The Magician," Chris nods.

Sebastian laughs. "It's a stupid name. He can't do magic."

"Not like you can, you mean?" Chris is aching with curiosity on this one. Card tricks are one thing, but he had seen Sebastian on the street below him only seconds before he had been up on the fire escape in time to save Chris from an untimely death. That's not something that can be explained away by sleight of hand or carefully placed mirrors. That's something Chris doesn't have a word for.

"I told you," Sebastian says, avoiding eye contact now. The first time he has done so. "I'm an illusionist."

"And the people who have gone missing, are they illusionists, too?" If they are going to start splitting hairs over what counts as what, Chris needs the terms laid out for him.

"Nadya wants to be," Sebastian smiles ruefully. "She's practicing a lot. Some day she's going to be spectacular. Miguel mostly sticks to bending spoons and freaking out the tourists with colored contacts." Two names that Chris does not have even the slimmest of files for. He wonders how many people are really at stake here. More than the dozen he knows of. "The twins are escape artists. Two of the best I have ever seen," Sebastian continues. "We were actually supposed to be working on some new ideas the night they both went missing."

"That something you dabble in?" Given the ease with which he'd slipped the cuffs, Chris can't say he's surprised that Sebastian can take it to even higher levels.

The question wins him a grin and a playful wiggle of eyebrows that ends in a wince of pain. Sebastian touches the wound gently. "I've been known to let people tie me up and lock me in small boxes, yes. You aren't the first person to cuff me to bedroom furniture."

"I--" Chris can't stop his jaw falling open as the mental images hit him square in the chest. Sebastian cuffed to other, more comfortable things. Chris finding all kinds of fun ways to distract him as he works on his escapes. And Sebastian, locked up in dangerous spaces, trusting only in his own skills to escape from harm. He knows which he prefers, and it doesn't help that the bed Sebastian is currently sat on has a headboard just made for experiments like that. "Wow, okay."

"I'll show you some time, if you like?"

It physically pains Chris to say, "Maybe some other time. Go on. Tell me what happened that night." They have to focus on what they know. What they can do. Not frivolous fantasies of how their bodies might fit together. Sebastian shrugs: a careless 'as you wish' from someone who knows he isn't being directly turned down.

"We were supposed to meet in the usual place - no, please don't ask me where. It's not my space to share, even with you." Pale eyes dart questioningly up at him. Please don't be angry. Please don't push me on this. Chris nods, a promise not to. "When I got there they were gone. I wasn't late, I swear. They just weren't there."

"You are sure they turned up?"

Sebastian nods emphatically. "Yes. Their things were there. And Houdini."

Chris is missing something. "Houdini?"

"Lizzie's pet rat. He's being looked after by a friend," Sebastian explains. "That's how I knew. She'd never have left him behind."

"Anything else?" Chris asks. "Any evidence? Did you report it?"

Sebastian lifts one long leg up to his chest and tucks his chin on top of it. Thoughtlessly flexible and innocently oblivious to the reaction it gets from Chris. "I called it in. Anonymously, of course. They sent a beat car to take a look at the scene, but then never filed missing persons reports. I checked."

"You checked?" Somehow that doesn't seem like a phone-call Sebastian just made.

It's not. The smile he gets is small and nervous. "I went into Precinct Seven and checked on the computer."

"You…went in. As in you asked at the desk, or?"

"Climbed through a window?"

"Jesus Christ. And no one saw you?"

"I'm very good at not being seen when I don't want to be."

Chris thinks of the way he vanished from his room. The way the man who attacked them had just looked right past him and gone for Chris in his place. There's more than that truth to what Sebastian is saying though. A tone of goodness and perhaps loneliness that leads a man to trying to find his friends in a world that doesn't care; in saving a man who he has no reason to want saving. "I see you," Chris says seriously.

Sebastian blinks, startled. "Yes. I suppose you do."


	4. handcuffs and herbs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some of that unresolved sexual tension gets...resolved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we start to earn the rating, at least in part! Enjoy.

Chris isn’t certain they should stay put. Then again, he’s not certain Sebastian should move much. He eyeballs the room. Not a lot of help. Nobody lives here; topaz-brown striped luxury wallpaper regards their incursion with vertical indignation. Thick penthouse curtains muffle light and coincidentally a view into the apartment; or not a coincidence, he thinks. Sebastian picked this place as a hiding-spot.

Sebastian’s face remains pale under the bandage, but he’s watching Chris. Arms wrapped around that pulled-up knee. Eyes wide, softer with surprise, shy smoke-tendrils across winter sky. He doesn’t say anything. Seems to be letting the words sink in: Chris’s and his own.

I see you, Chris had said. You do, Sebastian’d said back. With surprise. With an ephemeral shooting-star smile, startled into and out of existence.

Chris, for no rational government-agent reason at all, wants to see that unguarded brightness again.

He says gruffly, “Are we safe enough?” The wallpaper scoffs at him.

“Enough…I think so.” Sebastian manages to shrug without moving. “Wouldn’t hang out here long-term, but a few hours shouldn’t kill us. Speaking of, I have an idea.”

The _fact_ of Sebastian, magical creature and rescuer of federal agents on fire escapes, having an idea is not unexpectedly distressing. The context is. “That’s _not_ a good opening statement!”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.” Coltish legs fold up and settle down crosslegged in the center of the bed; restless hands produce a quarter from noplace and make it dance silver with the air. The pose and the messy hair hint at youth and innocence and unstudied charm. The deft flicker of practiced fingers and the determination behind pale eyes belie those hints. ”You can’t say no before I tell you.”

“Yes I can,” Chris says, because evidently Sebastian provokes Irish-boy stubborn contrariness. Oh, he could tell those pretty eyes no. He could damn well provide _discipline_. Test some claims about escape skills and being cuffed to bedroom furniture. “The last idea you had got you hurt.”

“Saving you, you mean? Next time I should drop you?” The quarter slides and slips over fingers, into palms, out. Hypnotic glints and gleams. “I’m going to be our bait.”

“There shouldn’t _be_ a next-- _absolutely fucking no!”_

“It makes sense.” Sebastian flips the quarter. Chris would swear it hangs in the air an instant too long. “Our uninvited company was after me, not you. He wants me next. I--I don’t exactly know why, but it’s too good an opportunity to pass up. Particularly if you aren’t here on the streets for long. I’d rather do this with backup.”

Chris scowls, plops down in an ungainly sprawl next to Sebastian’s pert head-tilt, and argues, “You’re not trained for anything like this.” His gun’s heavy with the reminder. “If you get hurt--more hurt--it’s not something I can let happen. This is my job.”

Sebastian throws the quarter at his face. Chris ducks--too late--but resurfaces from bedding to find eloquent fingers displaying the coin at him, not having in fact tossed it. “I get your point,” he retorts, swiping fuzz from his face, “but that’s not combat or mission practice.”

“He doesn’t want you. He wants me.”

 _I_ want you, Chris thinks abruptly, an echo and an answer; and oh the desire hits like the shock of a waterfall, seen distantly in glimpses but now up close and drenchingly present, icy vibrant brilliant shock running through his system. I don’t know you and I want you. I don’t know you and you make me feel alive, you make me want to protect you and chase you over moonlit rooftops and impersonate stereotypical mob enforcers just to get you alone in a taxi…

Unprofessional _and_ ill-advised. Sebastian’s an illusionist and a consummate performer and a sometime thief and con artist. Sebastian’d stolen his wallet.

And had returned it. With extra cash.

Chris’s heart melts despite itself. Never been good at the impartial agent shell anyway. Always breaking free, propelled by compassion: learned at his mother’s open door back home, nudging him into a life of helping people and righting wrongs. Right now Sebastian’s bruised and bloody and beautiful, looking up at him with stubborn winter-sea eyes and commitment to saving anyone they can.

He doesn’t know Sebastian in any conventional way. Not even a last name. But he thinks maybe they do know each other. He thinks maybe they can.

And he wants to watch those slim wrists flirt with his cuffs again.

“If we do this,” he caves, “we do it under my direction. You let me determine acceptable risk and possible scenarios. If I decide to call it off, we call it off.”

Sebastian gives him a long flat look over the quarter, stilled between fingers. This extends until Chris is sure he’s going to argue, especially about that last provision, or possibly even outright lie.

What he gets is a lazy mock-salute, insouciant as a cigarette, airy as wafting smoke. “Yes sir, Agent Evans.”

Chris’s entire heart and gut and, yes, lust-filled other regions demand that he pin cool sarcasm to the bed until that _yes sir_ turns from flippant to real and quivering with desire. He clears his throat. “I mean it.”

“So do I, mostly. Did you want to hear the details?”

Details, Chris’s hindbrain echoes gleefully. “…tell me what you had in mind. I mean your plan. Tell me about your plan.”

“Well.” Sebastian sits up more. Makes the coin vanish and reemerge like water: evaporating, coalescing from mist. “He wants me. He wants people with magic. The way to find out what he wants with both of those things involves, obviously, me. I’ve been keeping a low profile--don’t ask the question you’re going to, please, who would I be without some mystery?--but that’ll have to change.”

Chris obediently shuts his mouth on _please tell me, please let me in, your past and your secrets, any information I might need and any old demons I can try to fight by helping you_ , and asks, “Are you comfortable with that?”

“Why not.” Sebastian shoots him a smile, sudden and dazzling despite drying blood in an eyebrow. “I’m good at what I do. I have a reputation around here. Other illusionists. Practitioners. I don’t advertise, but you can ask around. If I put out word that I’m going to do something big, even something public, a stunt…they’ll come. They’ll want to know.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Pale eyes get very surprised; and then flit away for an instant, betraying emotion to only the far mattress corner before coming back. “I’m interested in the challenge. Something big, that I’ve not done before…pushing myself…I try to do that. I like making myself better. And I’m not shy; you must’ve noticed.”

“Nope, thought you were bashful and retiring.” Which earns a delighted not-quite laugh; good. “It’ll be dangerous. He’ll know where you are, what you’re doing…could be sabotage, could be kidnapping, could be--”

“Anything.” Quiet and strong as steel in rain. “I know, Chris.”

“Not Agent Evans?”

“Not after I’ve let you smear botanical first-aid concoctions on my face. You’re good at this.” Sebastian pauses, then, and Chris understands that somehow that was more than he’d meant to say: some betrayal of phrasing or tone, some gratitude, some acknowledgement that Chris _is_ good at making him feel safe, protected, bandaged up and able to take refuge in teasing. “I’ll need to spark some rumors. Word about whatever stunt I end up performing. Underground show style. Street gossip. Suggestions that of course the timing’s not a coincidence, this is me showing that I’m not scared, being reckless, being young and stupid and angry enough to dare calling him out. Think that’s plausible? Not an obvious trap?”

“If he doesn’t know you,” Chris says, studying that young sorcerer’s grace, that genuine generosity under flirtation and flash, “if he doesn’t know how you think, then yeah. Plausible. Especially if he’s an arrogant dick too, which he is, because he’s been thinking no one’ll stand up to him.”

“If he doesn’t know me.” Sebastian’s eyes are curious, gazing at him: rain peering into a cave, misty grey-sapphire behind a river-spill. “But not plausible otherwise. If you do know me.”

“Want me to buy you a chocolate-chip muffin?”

And Sebastian laughs.

And Chris’s gut swoops: hordes of butterflies, terrified at this insane plan, aghast at placing a civilian in danger, thrilled by the chance to see real magic--real magic!--in action, fluttering wings madly at the unadulterated amusement in that happy sound. “Okay,” he says, “let’s plan. Without you moving too much, because, um, that--just don’t overexert yourself. Sit here. Let’s plan sitting here.”

 

Chris has come around so readily to Sebastian’s suggestion that for a second it is frightening. He’s not hypnotised Chris. Wouldn’t. Never in a million years. But he knows he can be persuasive, even without resorting to such extremes. It’s what helps entice the right mark in a crowd while he’s in the middle of a performance. Way back when he’d been younger and more desperate it would get him hot coffee and a meal on the house; a friendly couch to spend the night on; a gruff _beat it, kid_ from people who would usually take exception to the kind of things Sebastian would do. Things he would always find a way to pay back, but still things. Useful things. People aligned with his desires, even if that desire is nothing more than _please, I’m so cold and I can’t feel my fingers._

He looks at Chris, cautiously assessing.

This is one of those things about him that he will never be able to define, even to himself. It might be the same gifts that help him vanish from sight or escape from locked rooms. It might just be that people look at him and like what they see enough to help him. Enough people have said as much.

If the way Chris’s gaze ever so often lingers on his thighs or his mouth is an indication then maybe he’s one of them. Sebastian feels his resolve soften. Chris wants him. Not a reflection of Sebastian’s own need for Chris to want to help him, but something genuine and curious. Something matched by the budding wonder Sebastian is feeling himself. Warm, kind hands. Compassion. Worry for Sebastian when he is hurt. Worry that Sebastian might get hurt more.

People will protect Sebastian if he is worth something to them. It's rare that they genuinely care. Chris does. Genuinely care, that is. Sebastian can read it in the clear depths of his eyes. Open and honest. It's nice.

He must be silent for too long as he contemplates Chris's eyes and his hands and how much he would like to the center of their attention. Chris leans in close. He looks like he is hunching in on himself. A smaller target maybe, or less of a threat. As if Sebastian isn't perfectly aware of those broad shoulders and the muscles in his arms. As if he's not already contemplating what they could do to him, if Chris wanted to.

Long, surprisingly elegant fingers touch his face gently. "Is it bad? Do you feel dizzy?"

Dizzy. Yes, Sebastian thinks. Dizzy about covers it.

"I'm fine," he promises. "Or okay at least. No lasting damage."

Chris's full mouth turns down unhappily at the corners. He makes a noncommittal hum of sound, and doesn't stop touching Sebastian's face.

"I promise, Chris." The wedge of Sebastian's heart in his throat makes it hard to speak. He wants to lean into those caring, careful fingers. He wants to let Chris tuck him into his arms again. He bites his lip and tries not to moan as Chris gently touches the space above his eye, then trails his fingers down Sebastian's cheek, absentmindedly affectionate.

"I like that," Chris murmurs, gently touching Sebastian's lip now, pulling it from between worrying teeth and rubbing the pad of his thumb over imaginary hurts. Ones he can cure far easily than broken flesh.

It doesn't feel like either of them is breathing.

"Like what?"

"You," Chris says, "calling me by my name."

"You don't like being Agent Evans?" Sebastian could, if he wants to, open his mouth just a little more and take Chris's thumb into it.

It's gone before he gets the chance. To his jaw, and then his neck. The skin he ghosts over feels like liquid fire. "Not to you."

"I'm special," Sebastian tries to joke. It falls flat as Chris tips his jaw up and forces them eye to eye.

"Yeah," he says, "I think you are."

There's a hundred thousand ways he could respond to that, from the comical to the heartfelt. He doesn't get time to even contemplate his options before Chris is leaning in and stealing a kiss, sense and logic and what feels like gravity all falling by the wayside.

it's a kiss Sebastian could lose his soul to: gentle, but demanding. Assured. Chris knows what he wants.

The gentleness could be attributed to a number of things: giving Sebastian the time to decide what it is he wants; a consideration of his injury; the inherent kindness of Chris Evans. Sebastian falls for all three, moaning as the other of those kind, competent hands curls into his hair and gently cradles the back of his head and he melts and Chris folds him down against the bed.

He's settled into a mountain of pillows, decadent and boneless as Chris kneels above him. "This how you want to make sure I don't overexert myself?"

"Endorphins help the healing process," Chris teases.

Sebastian blinks. "Orgasms must be especially good, then."

"It would certainly keep your mind off the pain."

"And our planning," Sebastian points out.

Above him, Chris frowns and leans back. "You're absolutely right. I am sorry, that was massively unprofessional of me. We should be focusing on--"

Sebastian isn't as gentle as Chris was, and his apology is cut short when he reverses their positions, flipping them both over with a trick he's not sure he knows how to explain. it leaves him sat on Chris's lap while Chris takes his spot amidst the pillows. "You're not Agent Evans here, remember? You're Chris." My Chris. "But if you don't want this - don't want me…"

Has he misread things? He's not good at this sort of thing. At reading desire, yes, but not acting on it so much.

But Chris is the one who touched him like he was made from starlight. Sebastian can't be completely wrong.

He's almost thrown off balance when Chris jerks upright and wraps both arms around him. "I want," Chris says, his lips brushing Sebastian's and his words seeping into his skin and infusing him with warmth, "to see just how good you are at getting out of those cuffs."

The laughter can't be helped. "Technically that is working…" Sebastian agrees. "It's not like we're wasting important time on frivolous endeavors."

"There's blood on your shirt," Chris says. "You don't want to get it on the bed, do you?" His hands are already on the hem of it, ready to pop buttons. Sebastian's fingers join his: more than one button sacrificed to their enthusiasm.

As soon as the shirt is carelessly thrown across the room, Sebastian is on his back again, bouncing this time as Chris arranges him like art to his liking.

He pulls Sebastian's wrists above his head and locks metal around one of them. "Too tight?"

Sebastian gives them a considering jiggle. "Tighter," he says. "I can slip them."

Chris obeys, but only by another notch. Now metal presses into Sebastian's skin. It doesn't hurt, but it's firm. Firm enough that he can't easily wiggle free.

"No bruises and no bleeding," Chris orders firmly. "If it starts to hurt, you tell me. If it looks like you're going to cause yourself damage, I'll smother you from head to toe with botanical goodness."

"It doesn't hurt. Not that I mind if it does. I have a very high pain threshold. And please resist the urge. Not everyone wants to smell like a rejected herbalist."

The other wrist is not yet wrapped by metal. Chris grabs it. Squeezes. Not hard, but hard enough. "I'm not going to hurt you, Sebastian. Not for this. Not for anything."

 

Sebastian’s lips part. But he doesn’t answer, distracted: studying Chris as if trying to memorize some rare artwork, a masterpiece glimpsed by chance through a crack. After a second he manages, “What if I accidentally drop handcuffs on your head…” but it’s clearly an afterthought.

“Still not gonna hurt you,” Chris repeats, tightening his grip on that wrist, belatedly realizing the paradox. “Anyway you won’t. But if you did I’d just be impressed you got out so fast.” Sebastian wouldn’t’ve thought Chris would punish him or get angry with him for a hypothetical slip. Surely not. Wouldn’t’ve stood--or lain--still for it.

He rubs his thumb over slim bones. Sebastian’s not delicate, but the wrist feels fragile in his grip, woven from sunbeams and sorcery. A breath--Sebastian’s, his own, both--catches at the caress.

“You like this,” Chris understands, half a dare and half a shared secret that comes out blunt and hot; he presses thumb to pulse-point, which answers.

Sebastian, lying like a decadent young emperor across priceless satin and pillow-top indulgence, smiles. “Yes.”

“You like a challenge.”

“Yes.”

“You like being asked to show off. To show me what you can do. How much you can take.”

Sebastian smiles more, tips his head: yes, his expression says, and how much can you give me?

“You do like showing off,” Chris breathes, close enough to kiss him, letting the words do it instead, “when I’m giving you permission.”

Sebastian’s mouth actually falls open. His eyes get darker, smokier, scorched by desire and a spark of surprise. “You--”

“Go on, then. Show me how good you are.” He pauses, adds, “How good you can be for me,” and Sebastian breathes something awed-sounding and indecipherable in that liquid-river language that ends with a very American “--fuck, Chris, you’re a terrible distraction.”

They’re both laughing when Chris kisses him, but not after. Not when Chris claims his lips, licks into his mouth, nips and teases and plunges and promises with the kiss, plundering as his captive opens up eagerly. Chris’s hand snaps the cuffs into final firm place; Sebastian gasps while being devoured.

“Too tight yet?”

“No…” Dreamy, eyes half-shut, as if the sensation’s opened up an unexpected ocean of bliss. Chris wants to see him look this pleasured, enraptured, astonished by care, for quite possibly ever. “I like it. Kiss me more.”

“Bossy,” Chris says--“Artist!” Sebastian protests, “illusionist!”--and bends down over him: holding him in place with weight, with big hands cradling that upturned face, with bodies rocking together. He’s rock-hard--like magic, he thinks, and wants to laugh, joy and adrenaline bubbling up inside--and his cock’s aching in his jeans, but his conscience twinges as he cups Sebastian’s cheek. Bruises and blood. Earned saving him.

“Stop thinking,” Sebastian murmurs, eyes unshakably clear as holiday mornings in winter, alight with the same anticipation that’s scampering along Chris’s bones. “I want you, Agent Evans, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“Brat,” Chris says over sudden shakiness, “say my fucking name, Sebastian.”

Those witch’s lips quirk up. “Chris.”

“Good. Um. Yeah. That was good. You being good for me.” He’s kneeling over Sebastian’s luscious body, spread out beneath him and shirtless and handcuffed to the bed. He trails a fingertip over that bare chest, watches the lift and fall of rapid breaths. Touches index finger to a pert little nipple, which is begging for it. Sebastian’s lovely: gazelle-slim but strong, shoulders broader than expected under the flirtatious shirts, waist beautifully defined. That body squirms a bit under the lightness of caress, under the scrutiny.

“What was that?” He keeps hands and question steady, not pushing. Sebastian _has_ been vulnerable in the past. That reticence, that bewitching mix of provocation and profound sweetness… “Not feeling okay?”

“What you said,” Sebastian whispers, eyes enchantingly grave and sincere and honest with arousal. “Being good for you. And you’re looking at me. You do see me. You said so.”

Chris raises eyebrows, says gently, “So you like being good for me,” and Sebastian makes a sound, someplace between a whimper and a yes, and shivers; but his breathing evens out. As if the words’ve reached some faraway calm reservoir inside. As if they feel serene. As if they feel…

…good.

Chris pinches the nipple, testing. Sebastian moans, a quivering low release of pleasure that resonates like lightning down Chris’s spine. He reminds them both, breathless, “Not hurting you…no overexertion…”

Sebastian swears at him in a few audibly frustrated languages. Chris laughs, slides the hand down to a hip, sitting above the waist of clinging jeans. “Still okay?”

“Please,” Sebastian says, midway between familiar sass and wholly abandoned yielding, and perfect, “yes, Chris, please, I need--”

“You need me?” Sebastian’s cock’s hot and hard and made to fit his hand even through denim. Sebastian whimpers, lifts hips, rocks into caresses. Chris leans down again, atop him, kissing him until that glorious euphoric look returns. His heart’s pounding. Sebastian’s elusive and shining and mysterious; Sebastian’s part of his mission now, goals entwined like bodies. Sebastian’s high on adrenaline and exhilaration, like Chris himself; the fight and the escape still crackle in the near past, highlighted by wounds. But this is now.

Now they’re here and alive and together, and Sebastian needs him, and so Chris Evans will jump out a window and dive onto a fire escape and make half-remembered desperate medicine and kiss bliss-parted lips.

He moves against Sebastian, bodies rocking together. Sebastian gasps, loops a long leg around Chris’s waist, moves with him.

The room smells of herbs and sweet lotion and dry air. The bed’s plush and welcoming, and Sebastian’s hips meet his, Sebastian’s cock pushes up against his as they rut against each other like teenagers, drunk on the nearness and the taste and the discovery of each other; not even pants off, and a clink of metal in the background, which should mean something--

“Chris,” Sebastian moans, and that’s a hand in his hair, a hand reaching up blindly, which Chris grabs and pins to the bed, looming above him--

Sebastian’s back arches, breaths coming faster. His head falls back; Chris kisses his bared throat, catches his shoulder with teeth, groans, “ _So_ fucking good--” and Sebastian gasps and goes tense and _comes_ , cock pulsing slick heat between them--coming in his jeans, as Chris pins him down with weight and hands and mouth-

Chris comes too, shuddering electric release that whites out the world. He’s dimly aware of his own panting breaths, his grip on slender wrists. His body atop Sebastian’s, Sebastian’s legs wrapped around his waist. Every nerve ending sings.

Exhaustion, a kind of sated completion, hits like a freight train made of release, a minute after that. He’s wrung out and sore from fire-escape gymnastics and panic over Sebastian’s injury. He’s weary and elated, and half-aware, falling in and out of sleep as he rolls to one side, as Sebastian’s hand strokes his hair. He slurs, “You ‘kay?” and hears the amusement in that flexible voice.

“Still yes, Chris. _Very_ yes, if you want to know.”

“Your…y’know…”

“My head is also fine.” Sebastian kisses him, adds in a low enough tone that Chris isn’t sure he’s meant to be heard, “I feel--good,” and kisses him again. “So you’re the type who naps after sex…”

“ ‘m not,” Chris protests, trying to wake up. When he moves he feels a tug on one wrist. Hard. Metal. Metal?

He bolts upright, or tries to. Stares at his wrist. “You--you--”

Sebastian didn’t only get out of the handcuffs. He’s put them neatly around Chris and the bedframe.

“No,” he tries, rattling his wrist uselessly. This fails to make the situation go away. “No?”

His magical creature, already poised at the edge of the bed, hesitates. Sebastian’s expression’s unreadable. His hair’s a disaster, and he touches the spot below the bruised eye as if painkillers would be a gift. He’s shirtless and sex-flushed and looks as if he wants to smile or cry, or neither, or both at once. “You were thinking I’d leave you here?”

Chris could say so many things. Yes. No. I don’t know you, not really. I know you’ve already run from me. I know I’ll chase you if you make me. I’m amazed by your hands, I don’t know how you got out, that metal was tight enough to leave marks on your wrists. I want you to stay. I can’t think, because you’ve made me fall head over heels and laugh during sex, and I want to tell you that everything’ll be safe and warm someday.

He could say: I know you won’t believe me. You _could_ leave me.

He says, “I’d rather you didn’t?” and tilts his head, hopefully harmless. “You’re hurt.”

“You don’t want me to leave…because I’m hurt.”

“Yeah?”

Sebastian inches back over across mattress-canyons. Tucks long legs up, settling beside him. Cool magician’s fingers tap the cuffs; they fall undone, though Chris hasn’t seen him reach for a key. The fingers pause to touch his own wrist, after. It’s an internal gesture, private, revealing simply the fact that he’s thinking. Not the content of thoughts. “I was only teasing you. I was going to look for clothing. Lance Tucker has expensive taste. I threw a few items in the closet, enough for window dressing. Which under these sticky circumstances shows my own incredible foresight, so you’re welcome.”

“Oh...clothing…”

“I could’ve left.” Sebastian sighs, does that wry quirk of mouth again, leans a shoulder into Chris’s. Chris thinks of snow leopards, of warily playful half-grown kittens, fur ruffled by their own vulnerability. Those pale eyes look younger and relaxed and elated, a curious lingering satisfied joy; and they also look surprised at this emotion. “We need to plan for more than the next thrilling handcuff-related escapade. We need to not be in this penthouse much longer. If they know it’s an empty shell they’ll notice prolonged occupation. You might be able to fit into a pair of sweats, at least. I’m not certain you can share any of my jeans.”

Chris’s brain gets stuck on shared clothing for a minute, and flails around amid strategic awareness and professional danger assessment and the need to put his arms back around Sebastian and never let go. The handcuffs lie beside him, open, smug.

He considers them for a second or two. Sebastian _hadn’t_ had a key. Sebastian can do things that ordinary people shouldn’t be able to do. Even the blasphemous ugly cut seems impressively better, as if doing its best to hurry up and heal.

“Next time,” he suggests, “I could blindfold you. That’s a magician thing, right?” Magicians. Illusions. Secrets. Danger. And Sebastian coming to sit beside him, teasing him with steel.

He’s not sure what he’s in the middle of, but he doesn’t want to be anywhere else. Joy, he’d thought before, glancing at Sebastian’s eyes: elation and recognition and a kind of sneaky shy relief, as if finding one exact person to know and be known by at last, in the center of the whole wide world. He feels the answering emotion pick his heart up and spin it around.

“Blindfolds’re easy,” Sebastian dismisses, waving a hand, “especially if I--well, anyway, hardly a challenge. Though I’m not opposed. Might come in handy.”

Chris winces internally at this offhanded contemplation of potential need. Sebastian might have to cope with blindfolds. Kidnappings. Attempts by The Magician to take him away, like the other street performers. Except that won’t happen. Chris is here. And Sebastian is magical.

His heart does another small happy somersault. Magic. Even if those pretty eyes won’t admit much about it. Even given present and powerful danger. Real magic. And he’s here to witness it. To help.

And Sebastian hasn’t said no about future sexual escapades. Has, in fact, taken this opportunity to look him up and down--Chris still orgasm-messy, damp uncomfortable jeans, legs flopped across the bed--and to visibly approve. With a cheeky smirk.

“Right,” Chris says, gathering dignity. “I’m still in charge. And…I’m saying…they’ll notice prolonged occupation and we should not be here much longer.” Sebastian gives him a look. It’s a splendidly vocal one. Chris grins back. “I think I’ve got an idea. Someplace to hole up and plan.”


	5. the art of levitation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chris finds out more about Sebastian's past, Sebastian has an idea, and sex and comfort are important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the new tags, please!
> 
> This chapter contains: mention of attempted (not completed) past under-age (nearly 17) non-con, mention of minor character death-by-magic (the perpetrator of the above), and, in the present, mild bondage and sex as comfort and belonging.

Sebastian is cooking them something that smells warming and exotic, as comfortable in the enormous kitchen of a disgraced billionaire as he is in a grimy back alley. He’s humming a lilting tune under his breath and, presently, levitating three inches up in the air.

Chris, who has spent the last hour on the phone with Scarlett and Mackie down in Quantico, enters the kitchen and nearly drops the laptop he is carrying. He keeps his wits long enough to set it on the counter, then feels his IQ drop points as he says, very dumbly, “You’re floating. How are you floating?”

Sebastian looks over his shoulder and beams. “Yes! I didn’t think I could. But then you kissed me this morning and my toes tingled, and now, ta-da!” He gives the hand that’s not clutching a wooden spoon an excited little twirl in the air.

"You're actually levitating, though," Chris feels a bit like a broken record. He has to reach out and touch - he can, he thinks, he's allowed - just to be sure Sebastian is real and not some illusion. His fingers reach a ticklish spot on Sebastian's ribs and he's swatted with an affectionate wooden spoon. "God, Sebastian, that's amazing. _You're amazing_."

High spots of color flood Sebastian's cheeks and he bites his bottom lip, oblivious to the enticement. Chris curls his fingers around his waist and just... holds him. Holds him while he hovers several inches in the air, higher than before. Sebastian, seemingly happy to be held, beams at him. "I quite like being taller than you," he teases, squirming when Chris pokes him back in that ticklish spot. "How did your call go?"

Chris keeps hold of him. "If you're asking whether I told them that I've shacked up with a very attractive illusionist in the foreclosed home of one of Wall Street's most infamous con men..." he cringes just hearing himself speak. "No one will bother us here, that's the main thing."

"We're safe," Sebastian surmises.

"For now," Chris agrees. He wants to say _forever, I'll keep you safe forever_ but Sebastian is floating on air, literally, and in a few days time he is going to step out into the open and challenge a man who none have dared challenge before. Safe is not exactly something Chris can keep him, not in reality. No matter how much he wants to.

"Good," Sebastian says. "Because I have been thinking..."

"Uh oh," Chris takes a step back and crosses his arms over his chest, ready to be stern. In the two days since leaving Lance Tucker's apartment, Sebastian has healed supernaturally well - now only the faintest bruise around his eye left to attest to the savagery of their attack - and he's quickly been going stir crazy. Chris wants him off the street and out of sight, at least until they are ready to make their move, which means Sebastian is, for the first time in who knows how long, confined to one space. He's countered his cabin fever by throwing himself into ideas for his upcoming performance, and the words " _I have been thinking_ " have left his lips on more than one occasion.

Mostly it is something mundane, or related to the job in a way that makes sense. " _We need to get word out before the big night. I should do some smaller gigs maybe, drum up some attention along with the rumors_."

Chris usually agrees, and Sebastian knows his craft and the heartbeat of the city. He knows how to make people want to see him.

But then he will come out with things like, " _I need to practice my breath control...want to tie me up and hold me underwater in the bathtub?_ "

Those ideas are ones Chris squashes pretty quickly. Usually while tripping over furniture, the images in his head bright and vivid and frightening. Sebastian has decided he is worth trusting, that much is clear, but now he's made that decision there doesn't seem to be a line he's unwilling to cross with just how _much_ he trusts Chris. Chris is confident in a lot of things; in himself, and in his ability to do his job; in his ability to take control of someone in bed. Sebastian likes that.

They haven't done anything since the incident with the handcuffs. He thinks Sebastian would be up for a repeat performance. He knows he is. In the moments between planning and plotting and sharing information he has thought about very little else. Sebastian's slim wrists wrapped in his cuffs again. His thighs clamping tight around Chris's hips. No clothes between them this time, just flesh. He thinks about taking Sebastian apart, one piece at a time.

He draws the line at holding him under the water to see how long he can last before he starts to drown.

Sebastian sees his expression and rolls his eyes. "No bathtubs," he promises, "though I really don't know why you're so against the idea. I can hold my breath for over five minutes."

"Then you don't really need any more practice, do you?" Chris points out.

"What if I need to hold it for six minutes?" He knows Sebastian is testing him. Pushing boundaries set when Chris made it clear that he's not about to relinquish control of anything: the case, himself, Sebastian if necessary.

"Sebastian..." he growls, low and warning. Don't push your luck.

Sebastian's gaze drops immediately, his whole posture drooping unhappily at the scolding in Chris's voice. He's still for a second, then he drops back down to the floor. Chris scrambles to hold him steady while he regains his footing. "Hey!"

"I..." Sebastian looks at the ground around him, then up at Chris. "Oops?"

"You okay there, Peter Pan?" He's gentle, both in voice and in touch, and lets Sebastian cling to him. “I’m sorry,” he says, curling a hand around the back of Sebastian’s neck, holding him steady and secure as he stares at the world around him and blinks in bewildered betrayal at his fall. “That came out a little more…growly? Than I meant it to.”

Sebastian is already shaking his head, not moving from Chris’s arms but resisting the comfort he is trying to provide. “No, no, it’s me. That was…I was just…” he breaks off and starts to swear in a dizzying blend of languages before starting to wiggle himself away.

Chris catches him, holds him. Doesn’t let him escape. “Hey, talk to me.”

“I usually am a lot better,” Sebastian says, looking up through dark lashes. “With words, I mean. It’s just hard to explain.” It’s clear he is more off balance like this than he was when hovering several inches in the air. Chris ponders, then makes a choice. The sweet little squark Sebastian makes when Chris takes a hold of his hips and lifts him up so he’s perched against the counter unlocks a small grin. They are back at the same height they were before. Chris has to lift his chin just a little to look Sebastian in the eye.

“Better?” he asks. Sebastian nods, then glances consideringly at the pot bubbling merrily on the stove. He waves his hand absently and the flames grow smaller. Chris isn’t even surprised any more.

“ _Ciorbă de pui_ ,” Sebastian indicates the soup. “My mamă’s recipe.”

Chris’s thumbs are rubbing warming circles on the sharp indent of his hips. He’s not sure what the relevance is, but this is the first real tidbit of his life that Sebastian has offered up. Chris wants to hold on to it protectively. Wants to prove that he can be trusted not to take those little secrets offered up and use them against their owner. “It smells incredible,” he offers up instead.

It makes Sebastian smile. “She’s a very good cook.”

“She’s alive?” Chris asks before his brain catches up with him. “Fuck, no, wait. That’s not what I. Jesus, Chris, what the fuck? I’m sorry. Do not answer that.” He glances up at Sebastian, mortified and horrified and afraid he might have just stuck his entire foot into an unhealed wound. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize Sebastian’s situation. He’s alone now, or was before Chris, and something about the easy way he leans into Chris’s arms, hungry for more of everything offered, suggests he’s been like that for a long time.

Sebastian presses a gentle kiss to his cheek. “She is alive,” he says, “and quite happy, I hope.”

“You hope?”

There’s a storm in grey-blue eyes. “We’ve not seen each other in some time.” An open wound, just not the kind Chris feared.

“Does she know? About?” He twirls his fingers in the air in a pale imitation of Sebastian’s thoughtlessly graceful gestures. A shudder runs through Sebastian’s body. Chris shakes his head before the question can be answered. “No, okay. It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it. Tell me about your idea.” Of course he is curious. He is desperately curious. That curiosity will never be allowed to trespass into hurt, though. 

“No, it’s okay,” Sebastian summons a smile that is a shadow of its usual brightness. “The two are actually related. Somewhat. This…thing,” he wiggles his fingers absently and Chris’s mind helpfully points out how poor his own imitation was in comparison. “It’s hard to describe. What it is. How I can do it. I don’t really understand much about it myself. I haven’t really wanted to. Until now.”

Chris’s stomach clenches - could be butterflies, could be guilt - “Until now?”

 

Sebastian’s world shivers. Temporarily blurs and merges: present and past, Chris’ concern and his mother’s hushed rapid voice: _can you get out, can you go without being seen, go now, leave me and go, sweetheart, everything will be well--_

He shuts his eyes. Granite countertop beneath his hips. Chris’ big steadying hands at his waist. Drifting scents of broth and spice and chicken--recipes he’d learned side by side with his mother, laughing in their new American kitchen, hands measuring and pouring and sprinkling, deftly slicing fowl and sliding a knife through flesh--

Every cupboard slams open. Silent screaming mouths. “I can’t,” he’s saying, “I can’t,” and he only realizes he’s saying it in Romanian when he hears his name in English, Chris’s voice pleading with him to come back, Chris’s hands scared and tight on his hips.

He takes a breath. Forces that memory down. Makes it into paper in his head: a story, a scroll, a manuscript. Old. Happened to someone else. Far away. Carefully, he closes each cupboard, reaching out in soundless apology; don’t worry about it, the house tells him. It’s only glad to be occupied. Slam all the doors he’d like.

He opens his eyes. Finds Chris hovering right there, inches away and vibrating with concern. “Sebastian--was it what I said? I’m so fucking sorry--”

“No, you need to know.” He scrubs hands over his face. Presses hard enough to make spots flare behind his eyes: red-black like blood. Like a body on a floor. Like-- “I could hurt you.”

Chris gazes at him levelly. Not dismissing the concern out of hand; considering this statement in the light of both their skill sets. “You could. I don’t think you will. Are you worried about that?”

“Yes.” That instant response shocks them both for a second. Sebastian rallies tattered flags of self-confidence. “I can do more now than I ever could before. Except. Except once. I said I haven’t wanted to understand. I didn’t. Staying hidden, landing on my feet, talking landladies into places to stay--that much, yes. But I knew I could do more.”

Chris is watching his face, tracking every movement, every word. Reading him the way a good agent would; showing emotion the way a lover might. “You don’t have to tell me. If you can’t--if you’d rather, um, forget this and eat soup, that’s fine. I promise, Sebastian.”

“You asked me,” Sebastian says, almost dreamily, distant, “how I knew The Magician. Whether I could pick him out of a line-up…of course I could. But that’s not the whole story. Funny, I never knew I could fly, until you…”

“Did he hurt you?” Chris’s expression’s rapidly swinging toward incandescent protective anger. “Did he do something to you? Is--is that why--how you can--?” One more hand-wiggle: less funny this time, or only so because it’s so human an imitation of the power he doesn’t comprehend.

Because Chris is both right and wrong, because Chris is shining with such square-jawed heroic fury on his behalf, he can’t help the half-hysterical snort of laughter. “Yes. No. In a way. I’ll try to tell you about it. Give me a minute.”

“All the minutes.” Chris puts hands on Sebastian’s shoulders, draws him close. Sebastian, slightly taller because of respective poses, rests his head atop Chris’s. Lets their bodies lean together.

In the background soup bubbles. Himself making his mother’s recipes for Chris, here in the home of a disgraced billionaire. And Chris has just gotten off the phone with the FBI, and the world’s absurd and upside-down.

He wants Chris’s hands on his wrists. Chris’s cuffs on his wrists. Chris’s strength pinning him down and holding him up, surrounding him and encompassing him and giving him the heart-lightness he needs to fly.

Upside-down, he thinks. Like walking on the underside of a fire escape. Like looking at the world through a magic mirror.

He asks, cheek still resting in Chris’s hair, “What did your colleagues say? For that matter, what did you say?”

“Said I had a contact who might have information that’d draw The Magician out into the open.” Answering readily but not without worry; Chris will hold a normal conversation if that’s what Sebastian wants. “Requested backup. Got laughed at. The usual.”

“They don’t trust you?”

“They don’t get why I’m here hunting down missing street performers instead of interviewing Harry Gold’s mistresses and manager for the dozenth time. The FBI…” Chris shrugs without removing arms, which encircle Sebastian and keep him close. “Internal politics. High-profile case, and it looks like I’m on a wild goose chase, and I can’t demonstrate any results.”

“You have me--“ Sebastian stops. “They won’t believe you. Magic.” This world, his world, exists in luminous rain-shadowed fringes around what most people think of as real or plausible. Ribbon-dances and daring escapes and ventriloquist acts; street fairs and fire-breathing and walking on gleaming puddles of air…

Illusionists and magicians’ve been a part of the kaleidoscopic city underworld for centuries, glinting bright over and over again through time like trick pennies. Laughing Irish accents in the eighteen-hundreds, showers of leprechaun-gold and lucky clovers. Dark-eyed Russian boys named Ivan who claimed to’ve captured firebirds. Whispered Spanish ghost stories that conjure frail translucent women out of nothingness. Supple poetry and enchanted summer nights ambling over from nineteen-thirties Harlem. The chatter of Chinese and Indian air-and fire-walkers competing for tourist coins. Sebastian knows so many of the current practitioners, has offered advice about slipping knots or false passes from one hand to the next while diverting attention with charming patter.

Some of them have touches, kisses, of talent. A song compelling enough for passersby to listen. A gift for inhuman flexibility. Art through which a person can hear the sea. Small grace-notes of the unusual.

He can do things none of them can.

“I can’t exactly wave you at Director Jackson as proof,” Chris sighs, answering his previous comment. “Are you tired? Did you want me to take over, as far as dinner? You can tell me what to do?”

“You could,” Sebastian says absently, thinking and not thinking, resolution not quite formed. “I mean the FBI, not dinner. I’ve seen you burn water, Agent Evans. Chris. They won’t believe you.”

“Nobody really believes in magic.” Chris leans back, looks him in the eye: wistful and tender and bewildered, hoping to say the right words without fully comprehending the extent of bandaging that’s required. “We all want to, though. You know people. You know me. You know how many people go to watch magic shows, or give you money on the street…”

“Desire.” Sebastian flicks a hand at the pot, lifts the spoon, isn’t entirely confident in his own ability to waft steaming soup across the kitchen, sets it down. “That’s what it is. So you listen to rumors, you pay money to play along, to believe for a moment, one coruscating moment...they’d believe me if I showed up holding your hand and walking on air. They’d believe me if I’d--if I hurt someone. With magic. Wouldn’t they.”

“Yes…” Chris throws a glance at the spoon. “They’d want to use your skills. Tactical measures. Have you? Hurt--is that what you don’t want to talk about, never mind, forget it. Um, when I said we wouldn’t have official backup, um, Scarlett and Mackie--friends, you’ll like them--said they might have some leave time coming up; they might coincidentally find themselves out here about three days from now. So we’ve got that.”

Sebastian nods in acknowledgement. He’ll trust Chris’s friends, if Chris thinks they’re trustworthy; Chris is a good person himself, drawn to goodness in others.

He lifts the spoon again, floating it above the pot. “Taste this.” Chris goes obediently, though not without reluctance at having to move even inches away. Sebastian says while holding the spoon in place--it’s not hard, just a cupping of mental fingers, a casual extension of self-- “They’d want to use me, and he wanted to use me, and you want to use me. Except that I offered,” he adds, because Chris looks stricken around a mouthful of _ciorbă_. “This was my idea. It’s also your case. I don’t mean I wouldn’t do it otherwise. I know exactly what I’m doing, Chris.” In one way. In another, not even close. “How is it?”

Chris swallows. “Good. Really good. Warm. Inside. I know you, Sebastian. I know you--even if you did hurt someone, you didn’t mean to. You wouldn’t.”

Sebastian’s heart breaks in two. One sharp jagged line. Searing across his next breath. How can Chris be so sure? How can Chris believe so strongly in his goodness, when Chris doesn’t even know what he’s done, where he comes from, what he’d run from?

“Food first,” he says, cutting off that plunge into inky water before he can fall deeper. “I expect you to properly appreciate my efforts.”

“I always do, don’t I?” Chris collects bowls and spoons and does the serving himself; Sebastian watches this domesticity without moving to help, oddly confused and lonely and heart-sore. Chris doesn’t appear to mind, getting out and opening water for himself, plus a bottled Starbucks brand frappucino from the pack he’d bought when Sebastian’d complained about missing raspberry-coconut mochas while stuck indoors.

Dismayingly, his eyes burn. Unshed dampness.

The television doesn’t work--no cable--but the electricity’s still on and Chris has conjured wi-fi from somewhere, and they settle on the expensive leather sofa and ignore the haughty grandiose dining table while watching random kitten videos on YouTube on Chris’s laptop. Sebastian’d done one quick unseen run back to the terrible FBI hotel while his agent’d been asleep, the first morning in this house; he’d evaded ominous sentry eyes and returned with a hastily packed bag and the laptop and charger, which’d slid under a dresser during the fight and subsequently gone unnoticed by prying visitors. Sebastian had considered the possibility that it had some magic of its own; had concluded that more likely The Magician was hoping Chris’d come back for whatever might matter, but hadn’t said as much to the laptop, which can certainly be magical if it wants.

Chris had been half-dressed, yanking on a left shoe, gun in hand, when he’d slid back through the window in sunrise pink-and-buttercup light. Had dropped the shoe. Had then proceeded to shout at him for twenty minutes about protection and surveillance and staying out of sight and staying safe, dammit, Sebastian, please. Big hands had shaken him slightly and stopped, concern for healed wounds filling up those eyes; Sebastian’d said, deliberately insouciant, “I left a note,” and batted eyelashes.

Chris, picking up said note, had roared, “ ‘ _I’m coming right back, and you’re cute when you sleep_ ’?!” Sebastian’d held up the laptop and said cheerfully, “Thought you might want your case files, Agent Evans.”

They finish eating in silence, other than kitten-squeaks from YouTube, but not unfriendly silence. Companionable. Filled up by the memory of touches and care; by the way Sebastian scoots closer and closer and Chris lifts an arm and drapes it over his shoulders.

Bowls slid onto the table, stomach full, body warm, he looks up at Chris through eyelashes. Then waits for the current video to finish. Stretches out an invisible finger and hits pause.

“Done?” Chris rubs his arm gently, undemanding. “Somethin’ else?”

“I did hurt someone,” Sebastian says. “I think I killed him. I’m not--I don’t know for sure. I was--when I was sixteen. Almost seventeen. Two weeks away. I didn’t know what I was doing but I did mean to hurt him. I want you to know that. I wanted him to stop, and--and I wanted that very badly, and, he, um, stopped. Everything.”

Chris’s entire body goes tense. A hammer before the blow, a taut bowstring. Sebastian closes his eyes. Can’t see disappointment in those generous oceans. Can’t see Chris’s illusions about him crumble to dust. “I told him to stop and he did, and he just--just lay there, in my bed, and I ran. That’s what you need to know. I could kill you.”

Chris swallows. Hard. Audible.

“I let someone else face those consequences,” Sebastian says. “My mother. She--I could have stayed.” If he keeps his eyes closed he can remain in darkness. He doesn’t have to come out. Chris will ask for details, and Chris will think that those details exonerate him, because Chris has too much compassion for his own good. Chris will tell him that he was a teenager, that what that man had done was unconscionable, that he’d acted out of self-defense. That it’s not his fault.

It is. He had more power than anyone else in that room. He should’ve found some other way.

Darkness wraps him up in black light, agreeing insidiously with his thoughts. He can’t feel much at the moment. Not the sofa under him, not Chris’s weight beside him. Distant. Receding.

A voice says, quiet and Boston-drenched and familiarly full of worry, “Sebastian? Can I touch you? Please--God, I don’t know if you want--if that would help, or hurt more, or--but I’d like to. If you would. You don’t even have to look at me, but please--”

He opens both eyes. They’re still on the couch. Chris is still next to him. Ordinariness circles the room like a sympathetic cat: laptop, soup bowls, the scent of expensive leather furnishings. His heart’s tapdancing like the red-hot shoes of the fairytale.

“Sebastian,” Chris whispers, hand halfway through the air between them, tentative and anguished, “I’m so sorry. How can I help?”

Sebastian opens his mouth for some flippant and bracing answer, has no words left, and reaches out blindly. Chris grabs him and holds on, not letting go: cradling his head against a shoulder, rubbing his back, murmuring low random comforting words, observations about kittens and the soup plus promises to be here, to keep him safe, to never let anyone touch him again…

He looks up after a while. He’s shaking, but more with release and relief and disbelief. He told Chris the worst. Chris asked to help. He doesn’t understand.

“That story,” he manages, “it’s--it’s not quite as bad as you think. Close. But he didn’t--it didn’t get that--he didn’t get to finish. It’s what I didn’t know how to tell you. It’s all one story, really, tangled together…oh, fuck…” He swipes a hand over his face. Feels Chris’s hand come down to cup his cheek after. “I’m alright. You need to know.”

“I think,” Chris says, in the manner of a man trying hard to hold pure rage inside lest it scare the person in his lap, “that I might need to shoot someone on your behalf. Just so you know. Sounds like you kinda already did, though…”

Sebastian takes a deep breath. And tells Chris that whole story. In bits and pieces, stumbling, as Chris holds him in the billionaire’s abandoned house in the lamplit night.

He tells Chris about needing to get out of Romania, needing escape--he guesses, though he’d not known then, that someone had known or wondered about him. As a boy he’d been intuitive, bashful upon first meeting not by nature--he’s more of a performer at heart--but because he’d meet a person, touch a person, and catch random glimpses: innocent childhood love, stoic loyalty, grim despair, trivial fretting worries over a broken nail, a hum of folk tune, a swirling red-black darkness once or twice that’d felt like a void and frightened him. He’d never had any control; those impressions’d come and gone and sometimes never come back and sometimes never come at all, which in some ways scared him the most: emptiness where rainbow colors should be.

He’d not been able to do much, not the way he can now. He tells Chris about once or twice casually finding lost items. A blink that gave him his mother’s pin under a chair. His aunt complaining about having left a scarf on the train, only she hadn’t, she’d left it at her lover’s, he could sense the heat and the laughter and what he’d figure out later was lust, and he’d said so unthinkingly and had been roundly scolded and sent to his room.

He tells Chris that he thinks now that that hint of fear hadn’t only been for what he was or what he couldn’t’ve known. He thinks that his mother must’ve realized how valuable he’d be.

The man representing The Magician had come to their door the evening after two men in government-issue jackets had followed his mother on the subway. The visitor had shown up in dim sundown light like a bruised low-hanging sky, and had suggested that his client would like to assist them--only two of them, he was afraid, no aunts or uncles, only Sebastian and his mother-- in traveling to Vienna and ultimately New York City, where they would be free; and he’d smiled as he’d said it.

He tells Chris that he’d been twelve years old upon arriving in America, that he’d discovered he hated flying in airplanes but adored free honey-roasted peanuts, that for several years life had been wonderful and dazzling and extraordinary in small uneventful ways. His first taste of fresh blueberries. Books on outer space and rock-and-roll history and sleight-of-hand tricks. A small but brand-new and tidy home in an idyllic neighborhood, a home that they did not have to share, walking distance to a library, and a telescope through which he could gaze at far-off stars.

His mother had fallen in love--with his private-school headmaster, no less--and had gotten married. Sebastian had very cautiously contrived to brush against the man early on, once it became clear that he would be stopping by for dinner quite a lot; had handed him a bread-basket and let fingers touch. That witch’s-gift second-sight had died down, almost out of perception, since arrival in New York and the onset of a new life and passionate crushes on girls and boys and books and astronauts; culture shock, he’d thought, or he’d been a boy making it all up after all; or it was merely biding its time, though for what he could not imagine. He’d needed to try, though.

He’d smiled at his mother after his future stepfather had left that evening, and had said, a teenager clumsy with the transition from baby-fat to seemingly endless gazelle-legs and an incomplete understanding of love, “He can come over Saturday too, maybe we can watch Star Trek together.” She’d laughed, and kissed him, and told him he was a good boy.

When he’d been sixteen, two weeks from seventeen, that life had imploded.

To Chris he confesses, fingers toying with his favorite trick coin again, “It was my fault. If I’d done more--if I’d shown off more--if I’d tried to do more, and not worried so hard about being normal…”

“No,” Chris says. “You didn’t ask for what happened to you. You didn’t--”

“Let me finish, please. Then tell me honestly. I knew enough to know--I wasn’t naive. I knew we’d paid some price to have that life. I guessed it might’ve had something to do with me; of course most children would think that at some point, but I had better reason than most to think so. I didn’t know he was waiting for me to--to do what I can do. You know what I can do.”

“I know,” Chris whispers. “You’re amazing.”

“Magnificent, I think I said…you asked whether I could pick The Magician out of a line-up. I’ve met him once. We had a half-day at school--some teacher-training day--and I’d come home early, and he was there waiting for me. He did a scarf-trick, first, the old-fashioned kind where you pull fabric out of your sleeve, standing on our front steps. He told me he knew who I was, that we owed him everything, and he was disappointed in me. The scarf-trick wasn’t real, it wasn’t even good magic, I could see the little folded bit in his sleeve, and I didn’t know him, so I asked him to leave.” He stops. Decades-old fear skitters down his spine: small crawling spider-legs, brittle and dry.

Chris takes his unoccupied hand. Holds it. Watches his face with endearing graveness.

“He said he was tired of waiting. And he smiled. And I felt--I’ve never been scared of anything the way I was scared, then. I can’t explain it. I could _feel_ it--” He wiggles fingers, meaning: everywhere. Inside and out. Magic. Chris nods. “He told me I had three days before he’d take matters into his own hands, and he walked away. Just walked. Like a normal person. I woke up screaming that night. Mama and Dad tried to help, but I couldn’t say anything. How could I? As you said, no one really believes in magic. Certainly not my spreadsheet-minded headmaster stepfather, much as I love him.”

“What’d you do?” Chris squeezes his hand. Clearly believes he must’ve done something to fight back.

Sebastian’s heart aches. Old bruises. Dull. “I tried. I didn’t know anything. I still don’t. How to--to do what I can do. There’re legends, always legends, rumors and urban myths, but nothing I could verify. Nothing that’d help me wake back up whatever it was I had. I couldn’t _do_ anything.”

“But--”

“But I could? Yes. It’s emotion. If you’re wondering. Strong emotion. Good or bad. Triggers. You make me fly. The man who broke into our house the night of the third day…into my bedroom, to be specific…”

“Oh God,” Chris says, voice uneven: FBI agent rattled like the lurching of the foundations of the earth.

“He told me exactly who had sent him, and he told me what he was going to do with me, in graphic detail, and he told me he had other men with guns outside and I should be careful not to wake my family, though that part was a lie, but at first I believed him. And that was exactly what The Magician wanted. Emotion.”

“Oh God,” Chris says again, “oh no, Sebastian--Jesus, you were _sixteen--_ ”

“Sixteen, terrified, tied up in my own bed, and being stripped naked, yes. Also the most powerful magician alive, I think. As far as I know.” He draws a breath--shakier than he’d anticipated--and lets it out. “I couldn’t scream out loud, so I had to--he put a hand on me and I panicked, I couldn’t think, so I yelled _stop_ , except not with my voice, it just kind of--came out, like I’d hit him, except more, like he was an ant and I was a giant and I’d just--he sort of froze and went stiff and fell over on top of me and I don’t remember the next couple minutes, but when my mother came running in I was out of the ties and sitting on the floor naked and I said, I think I killed him, I think he’s dead, and she asked whether I could get out without being seen. I said yes.”

He has to pause. Memories struggle in his throat like broken rubies, bleeding red and clogging thoughts. He says, “I said yes because I knew I could. Because I--I could.”

He’d been awash with magic. Fizzing with it, tingling, overflowing. Every shard of his soul singing free and wild and vibrant. He’d known he could run and not be seen. He could walk on water. He could turn mountains to glass if he knew how to ask.

He could kill a man with a silent word. He remembers the limp weight of a lifeless body atop his naked one. He knows the stopping of a heart.

“He had a tattoo,” he says to Chris Evans. “Simple. A magic wand on one forearm. We knew who he worked for. He must’ve been expendable. Or The Magician was angry at him. I don’t know. I do know I did exactly what I was meant to do, the way it exploded out of me, the way you’ve seen it. I’ve been able to do…what I can do…ever since. We knew he’d be coming for me, then.”

Chris is rubbing his hands as if trying to fight off frostbite, to get heat back into his bones. Sebastian’s bones, cold for a long time now, hope shyly for success.

“My mother said she’d handle it. Him. Whatever needed to be done. I took the cash we had on hand, and food, and a change of clothes, and I ran.” He squeezes Chris’s fingers in turn. “I do check up--I can’t go in person, but that’s why acquaintances’re useful. She’s being watched--of course he thinks I might try to make contact, and I assume he wants me to know he’s around--but she’s unhurt. She’s fine. More or less. Teaching piano to children, these days.”

She cries at night, one of his friends’d told him last year. She prays for you.

“Your stepfather--”

“--has Alzheimer’s.” Sebastian sighs. “It’s gotten worse over the last few years. Which is both good and bad. Obviously. He’s in a home now.”

“Right,” Chris nods. “He won’t remember much about you, but--well. Good and bad. I’m so sorry.”

“Yes. You asked why I hadn’t wanted to know more until now. What I could do.”

“Because he’d find you. The Magician.”

“Because he’d find me, because I don’t want to know…” He shivers, looks at their joined hands. “Because if that’s what I’m for I want to run away from it. But I can’t. I never could, I suppose. I did enough to stay alive. To talk my way into a bed for the night, dinner on the house, illusionist tips and tricks so I could earn money performing. Enough to hide in plain sight. And now you’re here.”

“Now I’m here.” Chris looks at their hands too. “And you’re doing this for me. With me.”

“Because it needs to be done.”

“Because you’re a good person.” Chris’s gaze meets his with a force that leaves him breathless; magic, he thinks dizzily. “Because yeah, you hurt someone, and thank you, thank you for telling me. I know you think you did something bad, but he fucking deserved it, it was fucking _self-defense_ \--don’t shake your head, I’m an FBI agent, remember, I know these things--you were a kid and you protected yourself and if I could find the guy and kill him all over again I goddamn would. He _hurt_ you. And you--you help people. That’s what you do. I’ve seen it.”

 

Wide spaces stretch all around and on the couch together, Chris is painfully aware of how cool the sharply modern room has become. The sun has long set and the chill of evening is a convenient excuse for the goosebumps that prickle Chris’s arms. Sebastian has other excuses for the coldness that seems to be radiating from under his skin, but not Chris. Chris has spent years in the FBI. He’s heard so many horrifying stories. Spoken to too many people who have seen and endured the worst things mankind can do to each other. His heart isn’t broken by another story of stolen innocence and fear. He’s a professional. It’s not…

He’s lying. Of course it is breaking. It would be even if he wasn’t holding Sebastian in his arms. His heart is soft like that. It would be hurting even if the person it is hurting for wasn’t special to him. Precious.

Sebastian has gone quiet. Contemplative, Chris thinks – hopes – not withdrawn. Still quiet though, and for all that they have shared many things they are no better than strangers in a lot of ways still. Chris doesn’t know if this is a normal reaction or if he should worry. More than he already is. He settles for tucking Sebastian’s head under his chin.

He has a call to make. After, when Sebastian needs him less. A favor asked from friends. No trace. No fallout. Just confirmation that the man Sebastian thinks he killed really is dead. Chris needs to be sure. Needs to…

Feel useful. Somehow. Do something. He’s not good with words, he knows that. He’s put his foot in his mouth how many times already? He doesn’t know how to offer comfort in any way beyond the superficial. He’s better with his hands. Those hands can hold Sebastian tight. They can stroke his hair and enclose him in safety and, if necessary, tear apart any monsters that might threaten them.

He does that. Rhythmically and quietly, waiting for Sebastian to come to him. Waiting for him to break the silence. In the meantime thinking things he knows he shouldn’t be thinking. Caught up with the pain of a horror story relived and in the face of the magic he knows races just below Sebastian’s skin, he wonders if it really is just coincidence that led him to Sebastian that first time.

He’s never believed in fate or destiny or a higher power moving him from choice to choice like a chess piece. He’s owned his choices, his victories, his failures. But what are the odds that he would go to New York with only a whisper of a hunch to follow and walk straight into the arms of a man who knows his suspect inside out? What are the odds that Sebastian would steal the wallet of an FBI agent on the case of a man who stole his life?

Worse though. More frightening a prospect… Is Sebastian just an unlucky victim among many, or is he the one target The Magician has been focused on? Is he the reason men and women are vanishing from the streets - a magic glimpsed in a frightened boy now searched for in every corner of a colorful and mysterious world? Chris can’t ask. Sebastian has no doubt thought as much himself.

He still doesn’t know what to say. I’m sorry? For what happened. That you were taken advantage of. That you’ve had to leave your whole life behind you. That you’ve been alone for so long.

That’s something. A place to start. He says, “Emotion, huh?” and drops a kiss atop unruly hair. “Is that why you were levitating over soup?”

“You,” Sebastian smiles shyly. “So much of it is because of you.”

“You said you’ve never really tried, before,” Chris points out, unwilling to take credit for wondrous things. “I think you’ve always been spectacular. Magnificent.” He puts the word out in tentative hope of glimpsing another shard of those small, fleeting smiles.

“Maybe?” Sebastian’s shoulder lifts against Chris’s in a shrug. “But it has to come from somewhere, doesn’t it?”

“I’m guessing we can’t just Google the answer to that one?”

“Not unless you want to really depress yourself,” Sebastian says. “I did teach myself all my early tricks from YouTube, though. At least until I found ways I preferred to do things.” Better ways, is what he doesn’t say. Ways that depend less on sleight of hand and more on genuine power. Still, he likes the image. Sebastian, on his bed, laptop open to a video of something wonderful. A coin dancing on clumsily elegant fingers over and over until it’s as seamless as silk floating on water.

“I tried to recreate a couple of Pinterest recipes once,” Chris offers up. “I maybe nearly burned my college dorm down….”

The shadows have nearly retreated entirely from the depths of cool winter eyes. “Oh dear.” Instead there is something light and bright and playful, and that now familiar thrill of something sparking between them when their skin touches. “I promise to cook for you if you promise to put me in handcuffs again.”

“Deal,” Chris says immediately. “Wait. ‘Fun time’ handcuffs or ‘give Chris a heart attack’ handcuffs?”

“Both?” Sebastian offers, wriggling out from beneath Chris’s arm so he can straddle his lap instead. “One after the other. Assuming the first goes well.”

His hands are resting flat on Chris’s chest, balance and a tease in one thoughtless gesture. He’s fast, but for once Chris is faster. He wraps fingers around slender strength and twists, pinning Sebastian’s wrists behind him and holding him fast as a gasp escapes between them.

“I think I learned my lesson with the cuffs,” Chris growls, shifting his hips and rearranging Sebastian on his lap until he has him right where he wants him. “I think we’re going to need to find other ways to keep you from misbehaving.”

Sebastian doesn’t hide the fact that he tests the strength in Chris’s hands. He squirms and tugs his wrists, then goes happily boneless when he finds himself thoroughly held fast. Chris _is_ stronger. “Oh yes,” he agrees, “please.”

“So polite. Tell me your plan and if my heart survives it, we can see how wriggly you are with your wrists tied to your ankles and a cock in your throat.”

All the lights in the building suddenly switch themselves on and the coffee table tips itself over in the face of Sebastian’s excitement.

“Oops?” he offers, pink and flushed and pretty. “But that does sound like fun. We could maybe do that first?” Hopefulness in guileless eyes. Pleading and sweet. Chris passes both wrists into the one hand and pinches Sebastian sharply on the ass, making him whine. “Oh fine.”

Chris leans up and pecks a gentle kiss to his pouting mouth. “I’ll make it worth the wait,” he promises. “Now tell me.” He leans back into the couch and releases captive wrists.

Shuffling closer, Sebastian presses them together and lays out his plan. “You’ve heard of Houdini’s milk can act, yes?”

Chris doesn’t know a huge amount about magic, but he does know that one. An escape artist locked in a large old fashioned milk can that is full of ice cold water. They are chained, and the lid is padlocked shut and somehow, without drowning, the escape artist frees themselves before the eyes of a delighted audience. He feels cold just thinking about Sebastian doing anything so dangerous. “I’ve heard of it,” he says.

“The trick is in the fake lid,” Sebastian explains. “It is padlocked shut, but the whole thing just lifts off on a hinge. And the natural water displacement when you climb into the can leaves you with a good few inches of air to breathe. Once the curtain goes up, all you have to do is slip the cuffs and climb out.”

That sounds easy enough, which means there is going to be a catch. Sebastian can slip the cuffs easily enough, but that’s not necessarily a skill only he alone possesses. “That sounds straightforward.”

“It is,” Sebastian agrees. “But there’s not much spectacle when everyone has a smartphone and wiki has the answers to all the tricks. So…” he hesitates. Looks up through dark lashes and waits for Chris’s reaction. “You’re going to lock me in a can for real. Proper padlocks. No hinges. You’ll let people test it to be sure. Then you’re going to wrap a chain around it and lift it up in the air, and I am going to escape with no curtains to hide behind.”

The knot that forms in Chris’s throat is immediate and solid. “And if you drown?”

“I won’t,” Sebastian reassures him. “There will still be a few inches of air, and even if there weren’t, I can hold my breath for a long time.”

“And how are you going to open the padlocks from the inside?” He can’t just pick them or slip them like he does with cuffs. Chris doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like it at all.

“I’m not going to,” Sebastian says. “On the fire escape, when you fell. I was in the alley and then I needed to be up there with you, so I was. There’s no trick there. No rational way of explaining what I did. So you’re going to lock me inside that can, and I am going to use magic to get out of it.”

 

Chris’s face becomes unreadable. No decipherable language in jawline or lips or eyes. Determinedly blank.

Sebastian hesitates, unsure whether to try explaining more, uncertain how to recapture playful ease. Words wilt under the lack of response, as he perches on Chris’s lap.

Finally: “No.”

Sebastian stares at him. “Just no? That’s _it?”_

“No, I don’t want you to do it. No, it’s dangerous. No, I am not going to lock you in a milk can _and watch you probably drown!”_

“It’s completely safe! Well, maybe not _completely_ \--I _have_ thought about this!” He glares. The roadblock glares right back, in the shape of an FBI agent who is stubbornly protective and infuriatingly loyal and unfairly adorable when setting that jaw. “When I said I’d been thinking I meant it. I’m not a federal agent, but I’m not stupid, either.”

“I didn’t say--”

“I need to do something extraordinary. Attention-getting. The tourists’ll assume there’s a trick to it, and of course there is, but the people we want to notice me, the people who know how the escape works, will know that what I do shouldn’t be possible.”

“Yeah,” Chris snaps, “and what if it turns out _not_ to be?” But the objection comes out with less force than a minute ago. And his hand reaches for Sebastian’s wrist, holding on. “Isn’t there anything less--”

“It has to be spectacular, Chris. And this one has the benefit of history and Houdini’s name. And I promise I can get out.” He tries to project a confidence he doesn’t wholly feel. Close, but not a hundred percent; he doesn’t know how he can do some of what he can do. He just knows that he can. Veins of gold like bedrock, like comprehension he’s had all along, an instinct woven into his core. With Chris, with the desire to get to Chris, he can do anything. “And you can help. I _know_ I can get to you. I’ve _done_ that.”

He puts his other hand over Chris’s, on his wrist. Holds that gaze with his own. “Let me see where you’re standing before I get in. Leave space next to you. Emotion and a destination. That’s what I used before.”

“Emotion…” Chris sighs. “When I said you were gonna give me a heart attack…”

“I’m sorry,” Sebastian says. “Well--not sorry for the plan. It’s a good plan. You know it is. But I am sorry you don’t feel good about it. Also, since when do you get to tell me no about things, honestly, I thought we established that, I can get out of anything.” He’s aiming for levity; this is presently difficult given the tumultuous emotions of the last half hour. Desire, excitement, horror in the shape of his past, bickering with the man he suspects he could want to bicker with for years to come. Hope.

Hope. That’s a new one; he’s been excited and intrigued and challenged before, but this feels different. This might change the world: his world, but the wider world too, for the better.

“Three days from now,” Chris murmurs. “And you’d be ready, you’d’ve practiced enough…you’d be able to do it, you’re sure…” and glances at their hands, and glances up. “I don’t like it.”

“I know.”

“You only just figured out you could fly.”

“And once I know I can do something I don’t forget how.”

“You might if you’re unconscious.”

Sebastian scrunches up his nose. “I won’t drown, Chris. And if it’s longer than five minutes you can take an axe to the milk can. Promise.”

“And you feel safe doing this.” Chris turns their hands, rubs small circles along the inside of Sebastian’s wrist, over thin skin and vulnerable veins. Sebastian’s heart picks up speed. Chris’ touch is exquisitely gentle but gently dominant, caressing intimate places, asking about safety. “You feel…”

The words trail off, distracted like Chris himself, tracing indistinct shapes along Sebastian’s arm. Sebastian thinks of spells and runes and symbols, of binding and capture. He can hear his heart beating; can feel the swell of desire like nothing he’s known, not a fierce wildfire but a slow inexorable billowing of heat that suffuses without scorching, that burns hot and brilliant but supports and buoys him up.

“Chris,” he says, “yes. I do feel safe with you,” and then he adds, “did you still want to tie me up and shove your cock down my throat?” because he can’t help being himself.

Chris laughs, though the sound’s dancing on quicksands of emotion. “Thought I told you to behave.”

“You said I should wait and we could do that after I told you my idea?”

“Guess I did say that.” Chris leans in, kisses him: unexpected and swift and sweet. “I like seein’ how flexible you are. I just…what you just told me, that guy in your bedroom, and--”

“It’s not any more true now than it already was before I told you.” He wriggles on Chris’s lap; Chris is growing hard, he can feel it. “I know what I like. I know what _you_ like. Would you like me to show you?”

“Brat.” Chris swats him on the ass, hard enough to sting. “Get on your knees.”

Sebastian promptly does. At the foot of the couch. Gazing up. Deliberate faux-innocence in his eyes. Couch-leather snickers; it’s seen some wild party-nights, and it knows exactly what he’s thinking.

“Stay put.” Chris pops into the unused dining-room, returns with braided thick curtain-ropes, grins. “Did I tell you I’m good with knots? Camping, but also I did theater when I was a kid, props and scene changes, helping out on set.”

“You’re full of hidden depths. So many depths. Vast and unfathomable.” Chris is winding ropes around his wrists, heavy and gold. Sebastian’s head feels heavy and full of gold too. Chris is in part doing this for him, because he asked; Chris wants him, and Chris wants him to feel safe. His mind swims.

Chris yanks on a rope. Sebastian gasps, and then whimpers as velvety cord tightens against his skin. Chris pulls harder, enough to make him bend backward: wrists tied to ankles in this position, his back’s forced to arch, an obedient bow. No strain--he doesn’t exaggerate his own flexibility--but compliance, vulnerability, surrender; his breath catches, shivers. His spine feels molten.

Chris comes to stand above him, masculine and tall and authoritative. They’re both dressed, Sebastian in pajama pants and t-shirt because he’d thrown them on to cook, Chris in the jeans and sweater he’d worn while on the phone. Chris hadn’t told him to get undressed; Sebastian’s not sure what that means, whether Chris is going to use his mouth and not permit him to come at all, punishment for minor transgressions or scolding for the not-really-heart-attack or simply sheer fun of denial. He licks his lips, and stops trying to guess. His cock’s rock-hard inside light fabric; he’s intoxicated, drunk on the position and the control.

“Depths,” Chris muses, “huh? You want to think about that word choice?” and slips a hand to the waist of his jeans, where the rigid line of his arousal’s pressing against denim; he pops the button open and slides the zipper down, agonizingly slow, making a show of it. Chris’ cock’s beautiful, thick and long and curved, and Sebastian’s wrists sing under velvet restraints, and Sebastian _wants_ him.

He offers helpfully, “I am thinking about that word choice very hard,” and Chris laughs, almost more of a growl, and steps closer and presses that lovely fat cock to his lips. Pushes in.

Sebastian moans around the invasion. His throat’s plundered, taken, conquered; Chris fills him up and doesn’t let up, making him take it to the hilt. His lips end up buried in deliciously masculine skin and curly hair; Chris puts a hand on his head and holds him down. “Said we’d see how wiggly you are, right? How much you can move with my cock in your throat?”

Sebastian, who cannot breathe with Chris holding him down and stuffing him full, tries his best. Arms bound by rope. Ankles bound in place. Chris’s weight pressing into him, covering him, surrounding him. He tries squirming, tries swallowing, tries working his throat around that giant iron length. Chris growls and fucks his throat harder. Sebastian’s cock drips and leaks messily, smearing wetness all over his pajama pants. The sensation only adds more coruscating brightness.

Chris keeps him in place for long enough that he loses track of time. He can hold his breath for over five minutes, but normally not when aching with arousal and blurry with the knowledge of being claimed. He starts to run out of air; his body quivers of its own accord. Chris tangles fingers harder in his hair. Sebastian tries to moan, can’t, and feels something in his mind quiver and yield too: complete surrender. He could focus hard enough and snap ropes with a thought or shove Chris away if he had to, but he isn’t, he doesn’t want to, he wants this, over and over, giving Chris himself and even his ability to breathe, because Chris is his equal and his partner and he trusts Chris…

His body’s shaking. Intermittent twitches, fighting for oxygen. He’s getting lightheaded. Chris did want to feel him wiggle; he gives in and lets it happen. And he feels shockingly good, lost in the light: drifting and airy, carried away.

“You do like this,” Chris whispers, Chris marvels. That voice penetrates the light like a shaft of sunshine, honeyed and warm. “You like knowing someone can challenge you, push you, keep up with you…you could come like this, couldn’t you? Do you need to?”

Sebastian jerks helplessly against him, bent backward, in his grip.

“Come for me,” Chris says, “like this, show me how much you like it,” and Sebastian’s body and mind open up and spill themselves at Chris’s command: emptied out, visceral and sticky and hot, simple release that becomes all he knows, distilled to sharp crystalline ecstasy by the lack of air, which amplifies every sense a thousandfold.

Chris groans out a shudder of desire, and comes down his throat. Sebastian swallows, swallows more, chokes on Chris’s come, trembles at the edge of another diamond-edged climax as come dribbles from his mouth, and collapses against Chris’ legs. His arms--freed without thinking, a sudden convulsive spurt of magic--clutch at Chris’ knees. He’s weak and shaky and not processing anything at all; he still feels lighter than air, and somehow cleansed.

He’s still dressed. He came that way, in his pants, when Chris told him to.

“Shh,” Chris is saying, “shh, Seb, Sebastian, it’s okay, you’re okay, fuck, did I hurt you, come here--” and it’s then that he realizes his face is wet too. Chris says, “You’re so beautiful, so good, and so, um, yeah, magnificent, you _did_ get out, you’re incredible,” and picks him up as if he weighs nothing and carries him off to the master bedroom.

Chris’s big kind hands clean them both up. They nap for a while, entwined.

They awaken and make love again, slowly, dreamlike under the blankets of night. Chris rolls atop him and pins him down, tenderly, with care, one hand cradling Sebastian’s head. Chris takes him carefully too, moving inside him, moving against him: not hesitating, especially not when Sebastian looks up at him and nods and whispers “Please” with barely a sound, but gentle in the assertion. Chris covers him with that lean tattooed agent’s body, a furnace against his breathless skin; Chris pauses to slip on a condom and then slips inside him as Sebastian yields for him, astonished and open and craving.

This time, like a first time, like a dream of a perfect first time, comes leisurely and unhurried and hushed. A secret temple built just for them in the night. Hands and mouths and bare bodies. Sweetly piercing heat and Sebastian’s small cry at the deepest penetration and the soothing muffling weight as Chris’s mouth descends over his. Chris groans his name when coming, awestruck, gazing down at him.

In the morning, glittering light replacing velvet shadow, Sebastian wakes to the rise and fall of Chris Evans’ chest beneath him, to the presence of sleepy male breath ruffling his hair. His body aches in unfamiliar and wonderful ways. He’s not a virgin, but of necessity any extended sexual encounters’ve been hurried and scattered; he’s had fun, he’s disinclined to turn down an enjoyable kinky experience, and he’s extremely flexible, and that’s all true. He’s even woken up beside another person before, and considered that person a friend.

He’s never woken up with someone he suspects he’s falling in love with.

He closes his eyes again. Listens to Chris sleep, feels the heartbeat under his ear. Chris Evans. The exact opposite of what he should want: a federal agent, a public servant, a man on a mission, a good man with a kind heart. Sebastian’s spent years running. Hiding. Trying to not be the target he knows he is.

Chris wants him. Chris sees him. Chris sees him with delight.

With a kind of hopeless angry twist of love, he thinks: I’m going to throw myself into danger for you, for these missing people, for everyone. I’m going to let him find me. I get on my knees for you because I want to. Because you excite me and you make me certain I can fly. With you as my anchor.

Chris has a life and a case to solve and friends who’ll be coming to help them. Chris will catch The Magician and go back to Quantico and take on another mission. Chris _likes_ him, that’s undeniable, and Chris is a good man, and good men don’t fall for people like Sebastian. Street performer, brat, only technically legal immigrant, runaway, and--lest anyone forget--teenage murderer.

His chest hurts. Funny, that. He’s not used to being hurt. He doesn’t fall. He doesn’t get sick. Around Chris Evans he’s had a twisted wrist and been thrown into a fire-escape and now apparently is learning about heartbreak.

He opens his eyes. Stares at the bedside lamp until it lifts soundlessly from the table. Levitation. He can do that now. He’s not quite sure how, only that he can, like a switch flipping, like lightness in his thoughts and consequently his body when he thinks about Chris Evans. Lifting the lamp isn’t like that. Emotion, and it sort of feels like the same mental pathway, but right now he’s trying not to cry and turning the need into floating, instead.

He glances at Chris. The ache softens. Transmutes into something sweetly painful and poignant, bright and private and hidden.

He sets the lamp down hastily as Chris stirs and yawns. He doesn’t make any noise, but Chris wraps drowsy arms around him anyway. “Hey. You feel nice. ‘S nice. Waking up with you.”

Chris Evans is a huge teddy-bear made of cuddles in the morning. Sebastian’s chest does that bizarre aching caving-in wondrousness again. “You make a good pillow. Also very…nice. I’ve been thinking.”

“Noooo,” Chris protests, sticking his face into Sebastian’s hair. “Too early for heart attacks.”

If Chris only knew. “I need to make one or two appearances. Drum up interest. See a couple of contacts.”

“In public?” Rapidly sharpening, no less a practiced tactician for being naked and snuggled up to Sebastian’s body. Chris rearranges their positions to actually meet his eyes. “You think you need to advertise?”

“Not the word I was going to use, but yes. No one’s seen me for two days, and the last anyone’s heard I was being shouted at by a purported Italian mafia henchman in the street. I can’t spring a performance on the world out of nowhere.”

“An Italian--oh. Me. Right. What do you need to do? You aren’t going to sell tickets or anything, obviously.”

“No. I’ll leave word with a few people. They’ll tell other people. I’ll do a few small tricks. Showing off. We’ll need a location. That _should_ be public.”

“I’ll think about options.” Chris rubs his back, half unconsciously, half comforting for them both. “Three days, we said. We’ll have backup, unofficial, of course. You said The Magician himself can’t do magic…”

“Not that I noticed.” He stops, shivers; a chill works its way up his spine. “I don’t think he can. But something…there was something. Dark. Not right. Not like anything I know. Tell your friends to be prepared.”

“For--never mind, dumb question, you just said you don’t know.” Chris tips their heads together. “Okay, then.”

“Okay?”

“Okay, where do you need to go? Today? I’m coming with you.”

“Oh.” He wishes he did know. He wishes he did have answers to those good questions. He doesn’t know enough. He’d never wanted to, before.

Not good enough. Not for Chris. His back’s cold, except for the spot under Chris’s hand, which is warm and safe and everything else he shouldn’t have. “A couple of spots. Coffee-shops. A park. A practice building. Also I want a book."

“A…magical book?”

“Just a book. I like reading, and you won’t let me out at night.”

“Might have other plans for you,” Chris rumbles, teasing and silly and sexy, “at night,” and kisses him, nuzzling beard-scruff into his throat and chest and stomach until Sebastian starts laughing, dissolving into happiness. That happiness might not have a future; doesn’t mean it’s not true now, and he uses no physical ability to levitate his own scarf up off the floor and innocently offer up his wrists once more. Chris laughs along, their voices mingling as scarf-fabric winds around skin; that rings true too, clear as day, rose-hued as dawn.


	6. the great milk-can escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything goes boom.

They slip out and head downtown, into the heart of the city. Chris has a car, but they don’t take it; Sebastian can deflect attention on a small scale, but has never tried doing so with a moving vehicle. They don’t want anyone spotting either of them in connection with this home.

The day’s clear and autumn-warm, air like wine and sunlight and promises, glinting playful and heady. Splashes of light over pavement, over buildings. Scents of food-carts and city life. Clamor of tourists and residents alike, passing through. Magic in sunbeams and smiles, Sebastian thinks: in the small spell of ordinary human fingers bashfully touching, glancing away, coming back to entwine on a stroll down the street. In a little girl’s dance with her balloon, uncaring of passersby who smile. In the scent of cinnamon spice from a bakery, enchantment in a nibble.

He uses a breath of magic to make the cheerful purple balloon dance back, moving on its own. The girl jumps up and down, wide-eyed. Sebastian tucks hands into pockets, and stretches long legs to keep up with Chris Evans, who walks fast.

Chris gives him a fond look but says nothing. After a second, their shoulders bump. Companionable.

He lets his own _I’m not interesting don’t notice me_ illusion drop once they enter his first choice of destination, though he keeps Chris obscured. The coffee-shop instantly lights up with chatter and the scents of dark roast and nutmeg and whipped cream.

“Seb!”

“Where’ve you been, man, it’s been like ages--”

“--heard you were in trouble with Willy the Fish--”

“No, come on, everybody knows he didn’t do that one, where’ve _you_ been--”

“--kept anyone from moving in on your usual spot, that street corner, knew you’d be coming back--”

“Was there really a hot mystery guy with a beard? Do you like guys with beards, Seb? Because I can grow a--”

“Did you just need space from these idiots, or are you in some kind of trouble? Do you need our help?” This last comes from Robert, who’s one of the elder statesmen around the magical underground, assuming magical elder statesmen exist. He’s got soulful brown eyes and an uncanny knack for knowing when people need help; he’s not got much in the way of real power, but he’s great at brewing coffee and quirky old-fashioned sleight-of-hand. He’d given a scared sixteen-year-old runaway a cup of cocoa and a place to sleep, once upon a time.

Sebastian, thinking very hard indeed about the question involving the hot guy with a beard--the asker’s Jeremy, who’s harmless enough, but the inquiry means someone’s seen Chris--swings a long leg over an offered chair, collects a mug of steam and vanilla-caramel swirl, and answers, “Apparently you can’t survive without me for forty-eight hours, no matter how many times you ask I didn’t do that one, thank you about my spot, even if you grow a beard you still owe me twenty dollars for doing that knife-trick you said was impossible, and…yes, I needed some space. To practice.”

Chris, unnoticed at his back, stirs: restless or simply surprised, not having seen this side of him. It’s another facet, one that’s as much a performance as anything else, but genuine despite that. Sebastian’s practiced and played alongside these people; has taught and been taught tricks of pulling fire-flowers from the air, of fake-shuffling cards, of lock-picking and uses for hair-ties. He knows most of the faces that conjure up orange-zest scones and slide them over to him. They know him, for a given value of _know_ that includes spontaneous escape-artist lessons and unattributed financial assistance when rent money’s tight. They don’t know his story.

They don’t know him. Not the way Chris does. The way he’s allowed Chris to know him.

Around a bite of scone, he says, “I’m not in more trouble than usual. I’ve been working on something new.”

“Ooh,” Jeremy says, settling down. “Are there ropes? Knots? Hot wax?”

Robert says, handing him another scone, “And you needed to practice in secret?”

“It’s dangerous,” Cobie says, “isn’t it?” Sebastian likes her sharpness; he grins. “Yes.”

“Do we get to know?”

“Let’s say yes. If you all stop by the usual spot, three days from now. At noon.” Midday. Bright. No shadows. He tries and fails not to think about high noon and Old West showdowns. “No hints.”

“You’re doing this in public?” Robert refills his coffee. Robert must’ve been worried. “Seb, you don’t perform. Not like this, not like shows, you said no when we asked you to headline the Spectacular Spectacle in Central Park last month, so that means something’s different, so do you want cinnamon on that, and what’s going on, again?”

“It’s about time,” Sebastian says, avoiding a direct answer to the question, “that I faced whatever fears of performing I might have, don’t you think?” and waves a hand.

The scone-plate hops up from the counter. Spins happily, wobbling before he gets better control of poor weight distribution. Then bobs over to tap Jeremy on the head. “Hey,” Jeremy protests. “Also, at least let me grab one.”

“No, sorry.” He wafts the last scone back to Robert, who takes it, somewhat bemused. “That’s not my trick, though.”

Cobie eyes the scone-plate suspiciously. “No wires, no magnets…can I see your sleeves?”

He pushes them up. Wiggles fingers theatrically. “Secrets. Magnificent secrets.”

“Hmm,” Amber says from the corner. She’s stolen his own half-eaten scone off his plate. He’s not hungry--Chris and a good kitchen and an FBI-issued expense account’ll take care of that--and he nods her direction. She’s young Andrei’s assistant at the moment, but they’re just starting out, and poorer than he’d been when he’d landed on Robert’s doorstep. She has a tame dove on her shoulder, and feeds it bits of scone. “But we get to see you perform?”

“One time only. And I’m telling you first.”

“You want us to tell people?” Robert asks, eating the scone, picking up his plate one-handed. “I mean you, Seb, _you_ want us to tell people that you, Sebastian, will be inviting people to watch you do something dangerous, in front of everyone?”

“Yes I do, and thank you for the concern.” His heart’s racing. These people will tell other people, and magicians’re curious as cats, and as merrily envious. Sebastian doesn’t perform for big crowds and has hinted at a new trick. They won’t be able to resist.

They’ll be in danger. Everyone in the audience will be. He’s The Magician’s target, and he’ll try to contain collateral damage, but that’s a possibility.

He hopes Chris’s FBI friends are good at their job. His coffee gets less hot, distressed.

He sets down the mug and slides off the chair. “I have errands to run, though. And practice. More practice. I’ll see you all there.”

A chorus of disappointed grumbles follows him to the door; a few people’re still poking distrustfully at the scone-plate. Robert walks him out, and offers, eyes level, “If this…trick…is dangerous, if you need a spotter or a partner or just, y’know, another pair of eyes watching out for you, I’m here.”

They look at each other for a minute. Scone-crumbs and intuition and avuncular compassion, versus Sebastian’s past and secrets and rolled-up sleeves over hipster-skinny jeans. Robert’s shorter than most of them; this fact always surprises people, once they figure it out.

“I’ll be safe enough,” Sebastian says finally. “I’m not…it’s not like that. I do have a reason, but it’s not _because_ it’s dangerous.”

“No,” Robert says after a minute. “You wouldn’t. You’re not the kind of person who’d invite your friends to watch you go out in a blaze of glory, I know you’re not, kid. You wouldn’t ask that of your people. But I know people’re missing, too, and I’m thinking you’re thinking something stupidly heroic, like getting yourself kidnapped, am I close?”

Sebastian can’t come up with a good glib answer in time. Chris tenses at his back.

“Don’t,” Robert says quietly. “Not you. We--I--don’t want to lose you too, kid.”

Sebastian opens his mouth, closes it, tries again: unexpected loyalty’s vanquished his words. Hand on Robert’s arm. Penny blossoming from nowhere, for luck, tucked into Robert’s palm. “I can’t tell you everything. But I do have someone looking out for me. I swear. And I can handle myself. Let me see what I can do.”

And Robert sighs, and nods, and accepts the shiny penny, and kisses him on the cheek: swift and startling affection. Then ducks back inside to yell, “Who let Jeremy near the espresso machine--” followed by a chorus of affronted street-magician yelps.

Sebastian stands in place outside the door for a moment, then turns into the sun, letting it splash over his face, and starts walking. Chris catches up with no apparent effort. Chris is large and fluffy and paradoxically dangerous in morning light, a sweater-clad golden retriever with a gun and a badge. And seems entertained by the coffee-shop interaction. “They adore you.”

“I help people. They like that.”

“I know you help people.” Chris glances at him sideways. “I talked to some of them, remember? But that group in there, they, like, feed you scones and ask whether you’re gonna be safe.”

“Robert’s a sweetheart who thinks everyone needs constant snacks and concern over umbrellas in the rain.”

“And he kissed you.”

“He does that to everyone. Are you jealous?” His boots tap across pale gum-stained pavement. Hollow irritated sounds.

“Of him? Nah. Are you okay?”

“Me?”

“You’re being prickly.”

“I can tie your shoelaces together without looking, you know.”

“Sebastian,” Chris says. “Are you okay?”

“Am I?” He stops and whirls around, forcing Chris to stop too. No one notices; passersby simply pass by. “I’ve just invited my friends--well, people who trust me to help them, people I’ve helped before--to watch me get threatened and possibly kidnapped or sabotaged, on the assumption that they’ll tell people and then _they’ll_ tell people and the right person’ll hear it, and he might go after them too, and I _know_ that, so no, Chris, I am _not_ okay!”

“If you don’t want to--”

“We don’t have a better plan.” He starts walking again, frustrated, needing an outlet. Chris follows in silence.

After a heartbeat or two: “Where’re we going now?” It’s an apology; Chris is trying hard.

“A club. Not as much my usual, but they’ll talk to other people. And then we’re going shopping. And running errands. And then you’re buying me lunch, and we’re going to go practice.”

“Okay.” Meek, and impressively so from a federal agent who knows the word no. This somehow sparks even more frustration; he’s being unreasonably annoyed at Chris, and he knows it, and he wants Chris to argue with him. He wants Chris to tell him he’s being reckless and careless and in need of a good scolding.

Or a spanking.

Or a hard possessive passionate fuck right here against this wall in the closest alleyway, undeniable and indelible.

Or Chris saying _I love you, I’ll never leave you alone, I’ll be here to hold your hand._

His eyes burn briefly. He blames this on the sunlight. On reflections from the pavement, scorching his heart.

“I’m not used to this,” he says, an apology in turn. “People seeing me.”

“I know,” Chris says. “Me either.”

Sebastian nearly asks, but realizes he already knows: Chris is of course here unofficially. Following a hunch. Fascinated by magic, which most people and definitely most FBI supervisors don’t believe is real. Chris isn’t just a gun and a badge and a fluffy sweater at his side.

“You know,” he says after turning the idea over, “you’re not a magician, I’d know, but there used to be other categories. Psychics. Sensitives. Champions. People who weren’t born with power, not the way I was, but who were drawn to it. Who could feel it.”

“You think I’m, like…magic-sensitive?”

I think you’d make a good champion, Sebastian thinks. Brave and loyal and pure of heart. Someone’s champion, anyway. Someone who deserves you. “I don’t really know. I don’t know what that feels like. But there has to be a reason you’re here. Why it was you. Who listened to rumors, who cared about street magicians, who stopped to watch me in particular. I did a lot of reading once, back when I was--when I was rather desperately trying to unlock whatever I had; I’ve been ignoring it since then, you understand, so this is me guessing. It’s a theory.”

“Huh,” Chris says, and Sebastian thinks he’s going to ask about power, about what he might be able to do, but instead he asks, “So how could I help you? If I was some kind of magic-sensitive whatever? And I’m still not convinced, come on, I’m a meatball field agent from Boston, I’m good at physical shit like gymnastics and shooting targets, but if you’re right. What could I do to help?”

A crack on the sidewalk presents itself; Sebastian, distracted by words, trips over it. He waves an arm, recaptures balance and Chris’s shoulder, which interposes itself between him and astonishment. “You…thank you.”

“Any time.”

“What you could do…I told you I don’t know. They were all old books. Kids’ books. Anything I could look up online. Not exactly reputable. I think most sensitives were just…sensitive. Intuitive. Hunches, especially involving magic and magical practitioners.”

“Like bloodhounds.”

“You’re my favorite puppy. Um, awareness. Wrong…ness. Detection. Maybe sometimes support, like a shield, or like extra boosts for magicians who needed to see more clearly. I think you’d have to practice. Training. Canine obedience school. I don’t know, okay?” But he discovers that he’s smiling: a puzzle, a challenge, another dare. Walking on sunshine. Chris Evans at his side. Grinning back at him.

“Obedience school,” Chris mutters good-naturedly. “Okay, setting that aside for now, and also we’re gonna have a talk about leashes later, do you know how to make scones, because I didn’t get one.”

“Leashes?” Sebastian muses, and promptly bolts.

Not so fast Chris can’t keep up. Not so fast Chris can’t eventually catch him; but it’s a game, and a test, and he can’t resist the set-up.

Through an alleyway. Over a fence. Under another fence, where a hole beckons. Bouncing briefly off a wall, swinging from a fire-escape, laughing at Chris’s expression. Sunlight on his shoulders, playing tag through city streets and rooftops.

Chris catches up about three blocks later, grabs his arm, and hauls him into the doorway of an abandoned tobacco shop; says, “A leash and a collar and a tag, return to Chris Evans, so I can tie you up again--” and kisses him, pulse-pounding and hot and vibrant under morning light. The peeling paint of the doorway flakes around his jacket; the wood’s old and sturdy at his back. He kisses Chris in return, and never wants to stop.

They find the club in question. It’s a classier if mildly shabby place, home of the older and more established magician-performers, the ones who’ve spent the past twenty years comfortably practicing the same standard repertoire. They sip whiskey in the middle of the day and reminisce in leather chairs about shows and stars gone by; they’re the old guard, and not one in ten has even a drop of real power.

But they _are_ the old guard, and as such possess connections. Sebastian wouldn’t be surprised if The Magician has a contact here. Maybe more than one.

He knocks--it’s members-only, and he’s not one; he could break in, but no need--and smiles sunnily at the assistant who opens the door. “Hi. Tell Paul that Sebastian’s here, would you?”

“Paul,” Chris says.

Sebastian turns the smile on him.

“Not reassuring!”

“You--” The door opens. Sebastian bats eyelashes that direction. “Surprise.”

“Hi, kid!” Paul gives him a hug that stays just north of touching less-than-public spots, polite as usual. They’ve slept together twice, and that’s been polite but kinky too, restrained in multiple ways and never about anything more than friendship and a mutual interest in knots and escapes and sexual release. Paul’s enough of a magician to know that Sebastian’s better, and isn’t envious, which is nice. “Haven’t seen you in ages; would you like tea? Or a proper old-fashioned? Or I can send young Tom out for that blueberry vodka you like, and we can talk about disappearing-knot rope-tricks from antiquity, have you read--”

“Busy today,” Sebastian interjects smoothly, “but maybe later. I said surprise; I meant it. Milk-cans.”

Paul blinks. “Are you asking if I’ve tried that escape, because I really don’t do water and--”

“No. But I _can_. Pun intended.” He waits, leans in, breathes, “Come watch me. Three days,” and then steps back. “And I have to practice. Ask around for the location; it won’t be a secret.”

“Anything you’d like,” Paul agrees a bit sorrowfully. “I’ve never seen that one done; are friends invited? Are you sure you don’t have time to come in?”

“Yes they are, though not for practice sessions, and I’m sure, unfortunately. Here--” He conjures paper roses out of a sleeve, a simple concealment, not requiring power; but Paul beams at him anyway, accepting the bouquet. “I’ll see you there.” And he and Chris, his faithful shadow, disappear to the sidewalk.

They take a cab because Sebastian’s next stop is out of the way. Chris stays quiet other than paying the fare, but after they get out--in a run-down battered neighborhood they both recognize--asks softly, “That was always consensual, yeah? I mean, you two…you did…”

“Exactly twice, and we both enjoyed it, and we practiced trick knots on each other. Wait here.” He slips into the gloom of the apartment-hulk. These people know his face, and have met Chris recently, when Chris was tracking him. Sebastian’s illusions can only hold so long; he’s never kept them up this consistently to shield someone else before.

He leaves money and tiny gifts--small toys, candy, a wildflower or two--in the usual places. The people who depend on him will not be disappointed; he leaves extra, in case he doesn’t get a chance to come back.

He slips noiselessly down a sagging staircase under a spluttering light and steps out into sunlight, where Chris Evans stands amid cracked concrete and shoots of green poking through from the earth below. He comes up to Chris from behind, and takes that hand in his. “It was only friends having fun. Nothing like you.”

Chris turns, and kisses his fingers, and Sebastian smiles.

They pause for lunch at a small family-owned deli Sebastian likes. Over pastrami and rye, their eyes meet; their feet nudge each other under the table. Sebastian licks mustard from a fingertip, and tries not to think about the future. Only about Chris paying attention to the motion of his tongue.

They stop by a shop full of used books, tattered paperbacks, enticing covers. It’s on the way. Sebastian picks up a movie-edition copy of _The Martian_ and one or two classic Asimov stories. When he moves to pay for them, Chris’ hand lands on his wrist, and it’s Chris who pulls out crumpled bills--not the FBI credit card--as if this were a date, as if they’ve gone out for lunch and a book-buying expedition and shared kisses on a teasing afternoon. As if.

After the books they drop into the most reliable magical supply shop. The man’s eyebrows go up when Sebastian requests the trick can and chains and padlocks, but then he nods. “Houdini?”

“It’s not as hard as it looks.” It is, the way he’s planning to do it.

The man grunts, which could mean anything from _yeah, I know, I sell the stuff_ to _says you, kid_ ; but exchanges tools of the trade for money from Chris’s wallet, snuck into Sebastian’s hand. Sebastian’s trying something new, a variation on his own _I’m not interesting look over there_ shield; Chris is visible now, because complete concealment’s tiring, but has a bland face, forgettable, the kind of guy who fades into backgrounds, and decidedly not with a beard. Seems to be working well enough.

Back in the billionaire’s abandoned sprawling home, he appropriates what must’ve been a home theater for practice. “So I’m going to do this once or twice the traditional way, so you can watch me. It’s not complicated.”

“That’s what you think.” Chris finishes pouring water into the milk can. Water’s splashed his sweater, his bared forearms. The sweater clings to him, outlining his body. Sebastian wants to pounce. “Show me the lid again.”

“It literally just lifts up. You can’t do it from the outside--see the shape?--but I can. Here, cuff me.” He’s peeling off shirt and jeans; no point in getting them wet. Besides, Chris likes seeing him naked in handcuffs. “Tighter.”

Chris makes a face but does as told. Sebastian stretches, nods, and without warning folds himself up and into the space. Chris stares.

“I’m not lying when I tell you I’m flexible. Also, you can see how much breathing room I’ve got. Now shut me in.”

Chris hesitates. Chris sighs. Chris puts the lid on.

Sebastian doesn’t even need to hold his breath, not really; there’s a good two inches of breathing room, and standard cuffs aren’t a challenge. He’s cheating a bit--he doesn’t have a lockpick on him, being naked--but Chris can’t expect anything else, honestly, and he’s out of the cuffs and twisting the lid and pushing it up in under a minute. “See?” He waves, breathless and dripping, at a tensely glowering FBI agent. “Perfectly easy.”

“Still not a fan.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence. Come on, that was like thirty seconds--!”

“I don’t like it.”

“How many times do I need to do it to convince you? One more?”

“Like ten. And you want me to actually lock you in.”

“Not yet. Let me practice this one again first. I hit my elbow on the side, getting out.”

He ends up doing the easy version--for him, at least--three more times before Chris consents to adding chains to the top. Chris looks marginally convinced that the trick lid works; less so when there’s no unmagical way out. “What if you’re in trouble?”

“Then I’ll knock on the side and you’ll take off the chains.”

“Can’t you just do card tricks?”

“Lock me in a milk can, Chris.”

This version, as it turns out, is scarier. Not that he’s scared. He tells himself that, as water gets in his mouth and nose. The inside of a milk can’s very dark, and he’s already done with the handcuffs but he knows he can’t budge that lid with that weight on it, so the only way out is visualizing himself someplace else--the only way out is his magic, which despite all his bravado is mostly unpracticed and without real direction--

Two minutes. Okay. He doesn’t have to breathe yet. He knows that. He tells himself that.

He tries to control his heart rate, bent double in the dark in lapping water. Chris is just outside. He can get to Chris. He can visualize Chris.

He doesn’t have a good mental picture of the home theater room. Of his actual landing spot.

He’s determinedly not panicking. He’s trying to move himself, and it’s not working, but he’s done it before, he knows he can, it’s a matter of need and desire and emotion--

He can’t hear anything except sinister water and his own pulse. Three minutes.

No. He can do this. He can get back to Chris. He can do this, because people’re depending on him, people need him to be a show, a lure, a shiny temptation to draw The Magician out--Chris needs him, because Chris will blame himself if Sebastian drowns, because Chris must be so scared--those kind ocean-floor eyes filling up with self-loathing and despair--he can’t let that happen--

He feels the jerk and snap of dislocation before he properly understands what he’s done. He’s naked in a heap at Chris Evans’ feet, dripping water, coughing. One hand finds Chris’s ankle and holds on.

Chris swears out loud, frantic, and drops to both knees and flings arms around him. A towel. Rubbing. Warmth. “Sebastian, Jesus Christ, I thought--”

“Give me a minute…” He bats at wet hair; Chris takes over and strokes it out of his face. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“Fine…I didn’t have…a good sense of…where I needed to be…I’ve never done this on purpose before.” He leans into Chris’s hand. “I still haven’t. I panicked. I got back to you.”

“Oh God.” Chris scrubs a wet hand over his own face. The puddle’s expanding around them on the floor. “This is a terrible idea. I should’ve never let you do this. We’ll think of something else.”

“No,” Sebastian says, stubborn. “I did do it. I got out. I just need to practice more.” The milk can’s not going to win. The Magician’s not going to win.

Chris dredges up a wobbly smile. “And if I say no you won’t listen.”

“Would you…expect anything…less? No, I’m fine, I’m just reminding my lungs about air. Five minutes. I’ll try it again.”

Chris bites his lip, lets it go. “I want to say you’re done for today. We’ve got three days.”

“Please,” Sebastian says, not quite sure why. Please let me try again. Please let me get this right once before we stop. Please let me help take that awful fear and self-castigation from your shoulders. “One more.”

“One more.” Chris sighs. “Ten minutes rest, though. And you, um, memorize the room before you go in, okay? If that was the problem. I can test you.”

Sebastian swats him weakly on the bicep. “I can handle it, Special Agent.”

“How many lights’re on the left wall?”

“Four, and that’s not how it works.”

“You don’t know how it works. You said so.”

“I just need to know where I’m landing. And strong emotion. A pull.”

“Emotion,” Chris echoes, and holds him close, keeping him warm. “Yeah.”

The second time, as he’s about to get in, Chris says, “Wait,” and kisses him: kisses him with Sebastian naked and cuffed and ready to be locked in, kisses him deep and thoroughly and with a grave tenderness that floods through him head to toes. Sebastian slips into the milk can, in darkness, with that kiss on his lips and shining buoyancy in his bones, and a clear image of Chris standing on the theater floor next to a folded-up red-velvet chair, next to the puddle of gleaming water, with a thick towel at the ready.

It’s still not immediate. It’s hard: he’s trying to push, to make something happen, when his normal method is to let everything flow. Instinct. Blending in. But his instinct also bends toward Chris, and his lips can taste Chris’ against them.

Easier, though not easy, this time. Less panic; more relaxing, forgetting the water and the chained-down lid and the small space; thinking of Chris, thinking of only that spot beside Chris, wanting to be there, wanting to be right there--

He still doesn’t land on his feet, because apparently that’s asking too much of his own coordination, but he doesn’t land in a crumpled coughing pile, either. Chris catches him, hands under his shoulders, and folds him up in towel-cuddles and kisses. “That was faster. And you’re not, y’know, trying to breathe water…”

“I’m getting the hang of it. It’s like…water…flowing…oh…okay, I need to sit down.” Dizzy. Spots dancing merrily in front of his eyes. “Sorry. It’s better now.”

“What happened?” Chris clutches his hands, having eased him into one of the theater seats. The water’s gleefully ruining red velvet. “Same thing?”

“No. Last time I had trouble getting out. That part went fine, I’m just lightheaded…and tired everywhere, I think…”

“Oh,” Chris says, in the tone of someone having an epiphany and wanting to smack himself over the head for not having had it sooner. “Of course you are. You’re fucking exhausted. You’ve been working goddamn _hard_.”

“I haven’t--”

“You were keeping me out of sight all day, keeping people from knowing you had company, and then you tried this. Which you haven’t done before. And you did it twice.”

“Well,” Sebastian concedes wearily, “when you put it like that,” and permits himself to be bundled into towels and carried off for a hot bath and leftover chicken soup and coffee topped with whipped cream, coffee being one item Chris has learned to deal with courtesy of FBI schedules.

Chris refuses to have sex with him that night on the grounds that he needs to recover. Sebastian argues for the sake of it, but is secretly glad to give in. He falls asleep in Chris’ arms, nestled in blankets, snug and secure. He doesn’t think about anything except how good that feels. He doesn’t remember any dreams.

They spend the next two days practicing, and making meals together in the shiny expensive kitchen, and making love, gingerly at first, under Chris’s supervision, and then more fiercely, devoted and wild and splendid. Sebastian gets better at teleportation, if that’s the right name for it, though he still can’t control it as much as simply release and let go and let it take him. Sex helps, in a way that half makes sense but feels slippery when he tries to rationalize it. Closeness, and Chris, and knowing each other inside and out; but also the strange lonely ache of knowing they’re doing this to solve a case, after which Chris will go home. Sebastian can move himself to Chris, a compass-needle to true north. Chris kisses him and tells him how good he is, how incredible, and says nothing about the place for a compass-needle when true north heads back to the FBI and the next case.

Sebastian smiles when Chris smiles at him. He wants to. That’s not an illusion.

He finishes _The Martian,_ and picks up one of the Asimov books, and curls fingers around pages: holding on.

Chris’ FBI friends turn up on the last day before the performance. They’re competent and also kind and extremely funny; Sebastian likes them right away. Scarlett’s got short blonde hair and a martial-artist build, slight and powerful, plus a wealth of stories about Chris from their Academy training days; Anthony Mackie’s taller and charming and hilarious, a joke in every comment, but his dark eyes say he’s deadly loyal to his friends. Sebastian stays quiet at first, observing--they know each other so well, and he’s a street kid with no tactical experience--but can’t resist being drawn into discussions about New York City and the trick of the sawing-the-lady stunt and Chris’ tendency to rescue stray dogs.

“He’s always been like that,” Scarlett says fondly. “He’s a real-life superhero. People, puppies, charity work. One time he nearly got himself shot rescuing a pit bull from an abusive owner. Who happened to be the local sheriff we were meant to be coordinating with.”

“He was an asshole,” Chris explains.

“You kicked him in the balls,” Scarlett reminisces. “Sebastian, you know The Magician, right? You think this’ll work?”

“It’d better, kid,” Mackie puts in comfortably, finishing off a slice of pizza, “ ‘cause we ain’t exactly here under official sanction, so if we’re wrong, and we spook this guy, things are not going to go down well.”

“Um,” Sebastian says, and then, “it’ll work.” He’s not Sebastian the Magnificent for nothing. “He wants me. I don’t know him, exactly, but I know that much. As long as you can do _your_ job and catch him before he gets to me.” Kid, indeed. That one has to be earned.

“I like you,” Mackie says. “Evans, I like this one. Good taste.”

Chris blushes but rallies with, “He picked me, I think, he stole my wallet,” which gets Mackie to hoot with laughter and Scarlett to demand the story. Sebastian curls up next to Chris and contributes sly comments and corrections, and they make plans and friends as the night trickles away.

As he’s getting into bed--they’ve claimed the master suite, but the rest are nearly as cavernous, and both other agents seem thrilled--he sees Scarlett wander into the hallway. Chris is coming back with the last two pieces of s’mores dessert pizza, and pauses. “Everything good?”

“We’re fine as far as being your backup.” Her back, appropriately, is to Sebastian; he probably shouldn’t be able to hear this far, but he can. Magic, or a trick of acoustics; irrelevant. “Chris, this kid…”

“Sebastian.”

“Sebastian, and I like him too, I can see why you do, but…” Delicate, a friend not wanting to wound, but an agent with professional concerns. Sebastian understands perfectly. “…you barely know him. You met him, what, a week ago? And I trust your gut and your hunches and whatever else, but you know as well as I do how attachments can screw up good judgment. He’s pretty and brave and he looks at you like you hung the moon, but we’re here to catch a bad guy and not incidentally solve the Harry Gold case-- _and_ your missing persons cases, I know--and, come on, Chris. I know you. If it comes down to it, if you have to make a choice, you save people. And that’s not wrong--”

“Then don’t say it,” Chris snaps, anger like hot gold, glimmering molten under the surface. Chris doesn’t get coldly angry; no, Chris is made of emotion, bright and vital and passionate, deep currents that rise fast.

“That’s not wrong,” Scarlett says again. “We save people first. Always. But if there’s a second when you hesitate--when you aren’t sure of what to do--and when we don’t know what he’s going to do, because he’s a civilian, Chris, he’s not trained--if that puts us or the case or bystanders in jeopardy, you see where I’m going with this? It’s not that I don’t like him. I do like him. But we’re professional for a reason.”

Chris stands excruciatingly still for a second, body taut; then his shoulders sag. He says, “I know,” and that’s all Sebastian needs to hear, “I know, but it’s not--he’s not just a civilian, Scar, he’s--”

“Special?” She pats his arm. A big sister. “They all are.”

“He’s different.”

“They’re all that too, when you fall for them.”

Sebastian gets out of bed. Wanders naked into the suite’s monstrous bathroom, a vast cavern of bath-pond and showerheads and marble sinks. Stares at hideous golden taps, encrusted with diamonds and decorated with cavorting badly-carved mermaids.

Chris agreed to not tell his colleagues about Sebastian’s magic. They’d gone with the story of The Magician collecting people he _thinks_ have magic, a deranged obsession. The fewer government agents knowing this secret, the better; even if Mackie and Scarlett are trustworthy, reports will be made and questions might be asked, and it won’t make a difference to the plan as laid out in any case.

He sits down in the empty bathtub. He pulls his knees up and wraps arms around them. The mermaids, ugly as they are, have compassionate hearts; they stay quiet, sympathetic.

He’s scared. He’s scared and lonely and _alone_ , here in the dark in the marble bathtub. He’s had Chris to himself, and he’d known it couldn’t last, he’s always ultimately alone, but it’d felt good. And tomorrow--

In daylight he’s going to stand in front of crowds and wave while the man he’s been running from, the man who forced him into magic and murder years ago, comes for him.

He’s not scared about the milk-can escape. He’s mostly got it worked out. Sebastian the Magnificent.

He wishes fleetingly that he really could be Lance Tucker, or James Barnes, or Jack Benjamin, or any of his other aliases. Lance Tucker would never imagine magic even existed. James Barnes would be good at vanishing away and starting over, a new life.

In a new life he’d never see Chris Evans again. He puts his head down on his arms. The bas-relief mermaids dance in place, offering all they can.

Footsteps echo, approaching; Chris’ voice echoes with alarm. “Sebastian? Seb? I brought you the end of the chocolate--where are you?”

So his federal agent doesn’t assume he’s been magically spirited away in the night, he calls back, “In here,” and flicks a desperate tendril of request at the light-switch. The bathroom lights snap on right as Chris enters, illuminating puzzlement. “In the dark? In the…tub?”

Sebastian bats eyes at him. “Remember that time I asked you to hold me underwater?”

“Yeah, and I said no.” Chris holds out hands to help him get up. “Everything okay? Nervous? We can still call it off.”

“And disappoint Mackie? Not a chance.” He lets Chris lead him to the bedroom. “I was only wondering if we could manage sex in that tub. Looks big enough. You got in with me when you were taking care of me, but you didn’t get _in_ me.”

“And you’re pretty flexible. In the morning, maybe? You said sex is good.” Chris kisses him, tucks him under an arm, feeds him a bite of chocolate-and-marshmallow pizza. “Anything that helps.”

Anything that helps, Sebastian thinks. “It’s a date, Agent Evans. Prepare to be amazed by my flexibility.”

“I’m always amazed by you,” Chris says, and the sincerity in his voice is almost enough for Sebastian to believe it’s true.

 

Chris hates milk cans.

Chris hates old-fashioned giant milk cans. Chris hates sunshine and glorious midday weather and milk cans full of water, into which the love of his life is about to climb.

He stares at the can. It stares back. Sebastian’s chatting to Robert again, plus a few others from the coffee-shop. Sebastian’s dressed up for the occasion, a performance here too: black boots, leather pants, clinging nearly translucent smoky grey-black shirt, rings that flash in the light when he gestures, when he brushes a curl of hair out of his face. He’ll strip down and remove jewelry and restrictive clothing for the escape, but he’s here to be looked at. They both know it.

Sebastian _is_ here to be looked at. Chris loves him desperately, frantically, hopelessly.

He knows it’s love. Nothing else could twist his heart and gut--and, yeah, other body parts too, but mostly the heart--and soul up in knots like this, bruised and wistful and aching and tender. Pleading to be allowed to keep Sebastian safe, to kiss him in every kitchen and every alleyway, to taste all his recipes and to hold his hands while he hovers in the air.

He’s pretty sure Sebastian doesn’t feel the same way. Those witch’s-brew eyes want him, like him, maybe even trust him. But Sebastian’s beautiful and winsome and magical. Sebastian’s complex and fascinating and kind. Sebastian obviously had been lying the night before, when Chris had come in to find him in the bathtub. He’s not certain what wasn’t being said, but he knows deflection, and he knows Sebastian, a little, by now.

Sebastian wouldn’t keep anything from him that might affect the mission. He’s convinced of that.

Nevertheless: Sebastian did keep something. Held back.

Sunlight glints off the milk can. Scorches his eyes.

He’ll protect Sebastian with his life. He’s already promised that to himself. If he has to make a choice he’ll take the bullet himself, or the enchanted lightning-bolt, or whatever it is that comes.

Certain in this commitment, he shifts weight. Watches his magician.

Scarlett and Mackie are unobtrusively working the crowd. Circulating, keeping eyes out, glancing back at Chris. No one matching Sebastian’s terse description of The Magician, though it’s possible he’d send more mountainous henchmen rather than coming himself. No recognizable angry behemoths in the audience, though.

Sebastian’s got a decent audience. All his friends’ve turned out, attired in flamboyant street-performer finery; one of them’s still got a dove on her shoulder, and two more have started an impromptu ribbon-dance. A knot of elderly men with solemnly curious faces lurk around the side; what looks like an actual ton of tourists has also appeared, drawn by color and action and spectacle. Sebastian, sunshine lying on his fluffy hair like a crown, waves. They cheer enthusiastically.

Under the cheering, Sebastian says something to Robert, steps over to Chris. “You’re looking very serious. Did you spot someone?”

“Nah. Nothing yet.” This has to work. It has to; he doesn’t have a backup plan, and if it goes wrong--

The best case scenario, if it does go wrong, is that Sebastian does the trick and no interference arrives and they all just go home. Not ideal: Sebastian’s magic’ll be on display, and for no gain. Better than some alternatives he can come up with.

Sebastian not being able to get out. In their practice runs he’d gotten tired, and he might be stressed. Might not be able to focus properly.

Sebastian getting out, but being swept up and carried away by some minion, or by The Magician himself. Real power. Something Chris can’t prevent. A worst nightmare.

Sebastian--

Is saying his name, eyes sweetly anxious. “Chris?”

“It’s…fine. Everything’s good.”

Everything’s not good. He’s going to lock Sebastian in a milk can full of water and hoist him up on the rigging they’ve borrowed for that purpose--Robert has some eyebrow-raising possessions--and wait, heart in his throat and choking his breath, for Sebastian to pop out onto the small stage next to him, on the red carpet they’ve picked out. Easy to visualize. Right next to Chris.

He wishes he were a champion. A magic-sensitive, like Sebastian’d said. Someone who could sense power. Who might _know_ if the man he loves is in trouble.

He’s aware that he’s not thinking enough about his actual job.

“It’ll work,” Sebastian says softly, an uncanny calm echo of Chris’s swirling thoughts, and rests a hand on his arm. “He’ll come for me, and then you and Scarlett and Mackie will get him, and then it’ll be over. We’ll find the missing people, and you’ll have solved your case.”

And Sebastian will be out of his life.

But Sebastian will be safe.

All those other missing persons, too--Chris doesn’t _not_ care, that’s why he’d come in the first place, and certainly why Sebastian’s doing this too. But the person he’s sending into danger now, the person presently trying to comfort him, is the last person on earth he wants to see hurt. Never, never again.

He remembers holding Sebastian in his arms on the couch. Remembers the weight of him, the shape of him, the way he’d accepted comfort and found it in Chris’s touch.

“We make a good team,” Sebastian’s saying, smiling at him, hand tightening on his arm. “You and me. We can do this.”

Chris takes his hand, lifts it, kisses skillful fingers. Puts his heart into the kiss: for Sebastian to read or to take or to hold dear. But he doesn’t say the words. Not the right time. Focus matters. Not as if those pale lovely eyes’ll say it back. Might feel obligated. Might fret over him and lose concentration. “Yeah we do. I mean we can. Do this. I mean--I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

Sebastian’s smile grows wider, and he dives in to land a kiss on Chris’ mouth. A few magician-friends wolf-whistle; Seb makes a rude gesture that direction without stopping the kiss. Chris doesn’t know who or what Sebastian’s making him look like, keeping him disguised. Keeping him safe too.

He kisses back. Hands in Seb’s frisky playful hair. Under the sun.

“Seb,” Robert calls, “noon.”

“Right.” Sebastian stops kissing him. Those eyes sparkle. Lighting up the day. “Showtime.”

 

The gathered crowd has formed a curious, excited circle around the innocuous looking milk can. Sebastian walks up to it with the tingle of Chris’s lips against his own and a lightness in his step he knows without a doubt comes from feeling the happiest he has ever felt. Even now. Even with what he is about to do.

He’s not disguising Chris the way he has been the last few days. He is an integral part of the act and even Sebastian has limits. People will overlook someone they aren’t paying much attention to, but under scrutiny things start getting more complicated. More stretches of power being used. Both he and Chris have agreed that he needs to be keeping secondary magic to a minimum while he is performing the escape. Instead Chris is wearing a baseball hat and a nondescript outfit of jeans and a black t-shirt, and Sebastian has him awash with ambiguity. Noticeable but not memorable. When asked people will remember a man and no details. Tall-ish. Normal-ish. Unimportant. Unimpressive. Everything Chris is not. It’s a smoke screen, not a wall of mirrors.

Sebastian knows how to hold the attention of a crowd. Today is different. He’s invited anyone who cares to to inspect the equipment and they have done so under the watchful eyes of Robert and Paul. Sabotage is a possibility. Not from The Magician, at least not that Sebastian expects. He will be wanting to see success, not failure. There are other threats from other performers. Threats Robert and Paul are more worried about than Sebastian is himself.

Amber flashes him an encouraging wave from the edge of the circle. She’s on the front row, and small, but that doesn't stop the couple behind her from trying to bustle forward. Sebastian frowns, moves to interject, stops short when she stomps on a foot and smiles sweetly over her shoulder.

She’s fine. Everyone is fine. That boisterous couple are just curious, not sinister. They aren’t agents of The Magician waiting to launch themselves out of the crown and attack unwitting spectators.

But, somewhere, someone is. The more effort he puts into looking for it, the more the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. Someone _is_ watching. It’s not paranoia if it is true.

The sun is at its highest point in the sky and the space they have filled glows with warmth. All shadows have been chased away by the brilliance of the day. No more spaces left to hide. It’s as exhilarating as it is terrifying. All those years spent in the dark, and now this.

He finds himself looking to Chris. Strange how a man he has known for such a short time has become his rock. There is something safe in Chris, something that lets him be free. There is security in his arms but exhilaration outside of them. A silent web of support. A safety net to catch him if he falls as he climbs to higher and more terrifying extremes.

Just a glance and that's all it takes. The excitement, the nerves, they all solidify into something sure and strong inside of him. He's got this, and Chris has got him.

The gathered crowd falls expectantly silent at the bashful raise of a hand. He knows how to play this to their advantage. He'll be the young and daring illusionist, just stretching the legs of his abilities. No longer just dipping his toes into the water. Committing. They know enough about him to know that he has talent and now they all want to see just how far that talent goes.

He bounds over to Robert. "Thanks for coming," he addresses the crowd, then withdraws a deck of cards from his back pocket.

A voice from behind him calls out loudly, "You better not have got me out of bed for a card trick, kid!" He knows the voice well enough to know that Matt is only mostly joking.

"It's called foreplay," Sebastian shoots back coyly. "Something you clearly know nothing about." Across the crowd, Chris rolls his eyes fondly as the goodnatured laughter silences the first of his hecklers. He shuffles the back quickly but with no small amount of flair. "Would you like to pick a card, good sir?"

"You can stop batting those eyelashes at me," Robert chuckles. "We both know I'm immune." They both know he isn't, but it's a fun game to play, regardless. Sebastian holds out the pack and Robert draws his card.

Sebastian tidies the rest of the cards and fits them back into his pocket. He doesn't have to focus hard. Just enough, just a nudge, and a smile creeps across his face as he says, "Okay, hand it over."

"If you look, that's cheating," Robert points out. He hands the card over regardless. "You're supposed to guess."

"It's not that kind of trick," Sebastian says, holding the card between two fingers, up in the air for the gathered crowd to see. "Five of Clubs," Sebastian says. "I've always been more of a Hearts guy myself," he says. He twists the card around in his hand, lets the smooth surface slide between his fingers as he plays the trick, and now he's holding up a Five of Hearts. The card might be small and the crowd ever expanding, but the stark contrast between the colours is enough to ensnare the attention of everyone watching.

They aren't impressed. Not yet.

Sebastian points to a girl on the edge of the crowd, card still held up high with his other hand. "Pick a card?" he asks her. "Don't stop to think."

"Ace of Spades!" she blurts. Sebastian laughs and flips the card between his fingers.

There's a low murmur of excitement in the air as the easily identifiable card takes the place of his Queen.

He points to someone else. "Three of Diamonds," a man to his right says. Then, "Six of Clubs", "Jack of Hearts", "Ten of Clubs".

Sebastian doesn't lower his hand once. He holds the card high for all to see, twisting it between his his fingers with increasing speed as the crowd calls out their suit and he produces it on demand. He's not trading the cards. They can see that, and even if they couldn't the suggestions are coming too fast and too random to predict.

It's a simple trick and every eye in the crowd is on him. He has their attention now in a way their polite curiosity could never afford him alone.

"I brought you here to show you a trick you have all seen done a dozen times before. You know how it's done. You know a good illusionist can make you think you see things you want to see." He stops taking suggestions but continues to flip his way through different cards. You could hear a pin drop but for the steady thrum of his own heartbeat. "But I am not interested in tricks. I'm not here to lie to you. There will be no misdirections, no curtains to hide behind, no fake locks or trick cuffs. We do these things because we want to believe that maybe there can be more to them than tricks our mind plays on us." This time, when he twists the card, he draws his thumb along the edge of it and throws a second card into the crowd. It's a duplicate of the one he holds, created from thin air right before their eyes. He throws another out, and then another. "I don't want to show you a trick," Sebastian says, "I want to show you magic."

He throws the card high into the air. It seems to hang there for impossible seconds, spinning lazily. Every eye is fixed upon it, and Sebastian takes the split second he is no longer the center of attention to gather himself.

He takes a deep breath in and paints a picture in his mind.

Above him, the card explodes into a thousand more and as they shower down on him like confetti, he lets out his breath and vanishes.

It's only a few feet this time and nothing as difficult as he is about to do. Chris still eyes him critically, trained eyes cataloging every inch of him for a sign that he might not be able to do what he is about to do. Sebastian's smile is for the crowd but his eyes are fixed on Chris when he gives a theatrical bow.

"Do I have your attention now?" he demands loudly, drawing an enormous cry from his audience as he appears above them, perched coyly atop the crane he is about to hoisted by.

It's Robert’s eyes he finds first, then Paul's. He doesn't think about the other eyes that might be watching him. It's not his job to, not right now, and a small, childish part of him craves approval from them even if he knows in his heart he shouldn't need it.

Robert's jaw is suitably slack and that's as close to a cry of congratulations as he will get right now. Sebastian will take it gladly.

There is no point beating around the bush. He has their undivided attention and now is the time to use it.

Jumping down from the crane, he lets the earth cushion his fall the way it always does, space wrapping around him in a gentle caress and the hard ground that is suddenly beneath his feet admonishing silently him for his reckless ways.

The milk can is waiting for him.

Sebastian makes a show of removing all his accessories and accoutrements. It's freezing, even in the brightness of the overhead sun and he makes a show of that, too. Stripped down amidst catcalls and cheers and standing quite unabashedly in the most ridiculous multicolored boxers he could find. When the audience starts to laugh, he throws his hands over himself dramatically. He knows he can't actually hear Chris laughing over the sound of the crowd, but it rings around his head all the same as he looks down at the garish monstrosity and with a sharp tug transforms them into something black and clingy and just this side of decent.

Sebastian stands there shivering and that's a part of the act as well. He leans over to the milk can and dunks himself in it head first before showering the closest onlookers with ice-cold water. He swears the loudest of all of them. "When I am done with this you can all buy me hot cocoa!" he tells them. "With marshmallows!" And Chris can spend the whole evening wrapping him in blankets and rubbing his poor, abused toes.

Who came up with this stupid plan, anyway?

The laughter and teasing falls away to silence as he climbs into the can  but it is still too loud inside Sebastian's head. Standing, the water reaches up to his mid chest and his body starts to feel numb almost immediately. That will help when it comes to disassociating with his physical form, but right now it's enough to make him tremble violently. He doesn't say anything more to the crowd and that's not because he doesn't want to put on the best show he can, but because his teeth will chatter louder than his voice can possibly carry.

He doesn't look behind him as the cuffs are fastened around his wrists. The metal somehow manages to be even colder than the water but it freezes like fire at the small of his back.

It's Robert that comes to test their sturdiness, tugging firmly but carefully before nodding his approval. He squeezes Sebastian's shoulder before he leaves.

Having his wrists bound makes no difference to him. He isn't going to be picking any locks so if anything it just adds to the spectacle.

The trembling hides the shallow hyperventilating he has started in anticipation of long minutes without air. The eyes of a hundred people are on him now. They will see and wonder if he is afraid. They might even be afraid for him. His friends, the ones who know something is wrong but not what. Who can maybe sense what he is trying to do even if they don't understand why. He thinks of them and the friends he has already lost.

He thinks of Chris, solid and secure. He's just a few minutes away from being held against a warm chest and the thought of Chris's heartbeat against his ear drowns away everything else.

He closes his eyes and slips beneath the surface of the water.

The lid closes over him quickly, each second precious. He can hear the padlocks snapping shut and then the rattle of chains as they are fastened around the neck of the can.

In the dark it is easy to lose track of time. He has only his heartbeat and his thoughts to keep him company and everything is tracked not by the ticking of a clock but by the tightness in his lungs.

He can't move too quickly. Not just yet anyway. It's far more dramatic if he holds out for as long as he can. Chris knows. He doesn't like it, but he knows. He won't panic. He will be there waiting to catch Sebastian when he falls.

Moving from one place to another is easier now, but that's never been what worries him, not really. It's everything else. It's the dark and the cold and the inescapable panic he knows will follow once he starts to run out of air.

It's not the teleporting that worries him.

It's the fear that maybe this will be the time that he can't do it.

The can lurches and his wrists bang against the side. The clash of metal against metal sends a spike of pain up his wrists and oddly that helps him focus. That spark of fear is still there and it mostly likely will be forever. It's probably a good thing. This kind of stupidity isn't something that should be done without a good dose of fear to keep him grounded.

So long as he is stronger, and he is.

The world rocks and he can no longer tell up from down. It's a minute, then two. He lets the cuffs fall from his wrists but doesn't try to move.

Chris is there, waiting for him. Just a few minutes longer.

He can't hear the crowd but he can imagine what they are doing. He's not been long enough for them to worry, not yet.

A few more minutes.

Two become three. Then four.

 _Now_ his lungs are burning. Now they are screaming at him, threatening to feed the fear that still lurks in the back of his mind.

Chris, he thinks, _Chris_.

There's a scream that shoots right through him, shaking away the cold cobwebs in his head. After the silence of the can the sudden uproar or the crowd is almost deafening, and it is so disorienting that he almost loses his balance in an attempt to find his footing.

This time is even easier than the last. So easy in fact that for a second he doesn't even realize he's actually done it. Then there are arms around him, holding him, steadying him. He's not pulled into the circle of those arms like he wants to be, but then they agreed on this, didn't they?

He blinks and looks up into Chris's serious eyes, drowning as assuredly in their depths as he had been in that ice cold water.

Chris holds him firm and steady, supporting him at his side as he takes hold of Sebastian's hand and thrusts it into the air in a sign of victory.

The crowd goes wild, but Sebastian can still hear the voice that rumbles against his ear. "I am so fucking proud of you," Chris says.

And Sebastian, not thinking - not _caring_ \- just lost in the moment, grabs Chris around the back of his neck and slams their mouths together.

It’s a kiss that lasts only moments before the crowd swarms and swallows them both up in jubilant arms. The expression on Chris’s face switches from relieved, rejoicing, to concern. His hand tightens around Sebastian’s wrist before the press of bodies separates them completely. Robert’s arms are the first around Sebastian’s shoulders, bewildered and excited and proud. He mutters curses as exclamations and Sebastian can feel the rapid beating of his heart. Sebastian melts into the embrace and wonders if he is floating on air once more. He feels like he can, like he’s about to any second.

But Robert’s arms keep him on the ground, and then Paul’s and Cobie’s and his friends, one after another, solidifying his connection to this world, not the one he is shimmering on the edge of.

The crowd chatter and babble and gossip, so loud that Sebastian can hardly make out the words spoken closest to him. They want to know how he’s done it. They want in on the secret.

For a moment, Sebastian wants nothing more than to share it with them.

The arms around his neck are slimmer now, slender and thin and trembling. He wraps his hands around Amber’s back before he even realizes she is the one hugging him. He’s ready to hold her, protect her, even as her fingers curl around the back of his neck and she presses her face into his chest and sobs.

“Why did you do that, Sebastian? Why did you have to do that?”

Surprise makes him rougher than he means to be. His hands curl around her wrists, prying himself away from her grasp.

It’s too late. Her wrists slip from his fingers, a trick Sebastian taught her years ago, and she wraps herself around him again, stronger this time, firmer. At the back of his neck, Sebastian can feel the patch she has pressed against his skin. It’s harder to peel off than it should be, harder to understand just why his fingers aren’t working the way they should be.

This. No. This isn’t-- Amber isn’t. She wouldn’t. Only…

They never planned for this. The threat was always on the outside. A stranger hiding the in the dark. A suit waiting for him on a doorstep with a smile that never reaches his eyes.

“Amber…” his arms drop, heavy and useless. She’s already pressed herself to his side and she’s there, shouldering his weight when his legs start to sag.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, clutching him tightly. “I’m so sorry. He never gives me a choice.”

They are on the edge of the crowd somehow and Sebastian can’t remember having moved. There are still so many people, so many people looking at them and talking to him and not one of them are _seeing_ a damn thing.

Chris…he needs Chris. Chris won’t let this happen. He’ll see. He’ll stop it.

And maybe he does. Or maybe it’s just the scared, frantic scream of his heart that reaches its target so soon after it is flung into the world. But he is there, on the far side of the crowd, shoving and shouting and he’s only a few feet away. He’ll reach them.

But it is Scarlett who arrives first, her hand wrapping around Sebastian’s arm, jerking him to a stop. She pushes back the edge of her jacket with her other hand. A gun, hidden beneath leather.

Amber slips a hand into her pocket, pulls it out, and flings a fistful of fine powder into Scarlett’s face.

“No!” Sebastian’s body obeys him for a split second. Long enough to reach out and touch the edge of Scarlett’s face as she slumps to her knees, hands at her throat, her skin going pale and then white and then blue.

He can’t keep a grasp on both worlds. They are spinning too far out of his control, faint and muted and crumbling. His body won’t listen to him and his thoughts aren’t being any kinder. He has to choose, and it’s so easy.

Scarlett’s lungs aren’t working, not until he demands that they do. He watches the color come back to her cheeks and can do nothing more to hold back the darkness that closes over him.


	7. memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things are not good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for belated posting! I had to run off to England for an academic conference thing.
> 
> Um, not sure if it's enough for a real warning tag yet, but: kidnapped and frightened Sebastian, with a captor trying to persuade him of twisted love?

Chris is running. The world is imploding and Chris is running. Breath burns in his lungs. Pulse in his ears. Training moves his body in automatic ways, but sheer horror moves his heart.

Sebastian--

He can see Sebastian, can see Sebastian staggering and reaching out and then going limp and then  _ gone-- _

The way he and the girl, Amber, had been gone moments ago--at Chris’s side for a brief glorious shining triumphant instant, and then yanked away, and of course, of course it’d been a betrayal, something none of them’d thought of--

Scarlett’s crumpled on the ground when he gets there. Sunshine splashes her hair like blood. But she’s moving, breathing, pushing herself up on an elbow. “Sebastian--”

“I know. They’re gone.” He gets an arm behind her; at his back Robert’s doing crowd control, reassurance, pretending it’s part of the act. Robert knows it isn’t; the small shaken knot of people who know and love Sebastian know it isn’t. The world feels unreal. “She must be able to do--something like what he can do. A little.”

“Most of it was a trick,” Scarlett says, coughing. “Powders, drugs...I’m pretty sure she drugged him...but. Chris. He saved me.”

“What?”

“I couldn’t breathe. And he didn’t have time to save both of us, I could see it in his face, and he saved me.” She’s sitting up now. “We’re going to find him.” 

Chris can see that loyalty, can hear it in her words: Sebastian’s switched from being a useful and clever civilian to one of  _ them _ . And they’ll bring him home.

He himself can’t wrap his mind and heart around what’s happened. Shock. Numbness. The sinking realization that he promised Sebastian he’d be there, he’d keep Seb safe, and he’s failed so badly he might not’ve tried at all. He might’ve made it all worse: one more person to disguise and drain Seb’s magic, a passionate wild kiss under riotous daylight, a target.

He’s lost Sebastian. He’s failed Sebastian. 

Sebastian’s in the hands of a man who wants him, his power--

The hands of a man who was once capable of sending a disposable minion into a sixteen-year-old boy’s bedroom at night, in order to trigger that power through trauma.

His hands don’t shake because his hands’ve got years of practice at obeying commands under stress. But they want to. He wants to.

Mackie comes sprinting up through the dispersing throng. “I thought I saw them one more time--but she’s got illusion skills or whatever--I just couldn’t keep up, man, too fast. Chris--” He offers assistance; both Scarlett and Chris need it. Wavering, but getting back on their feet. “I’m sorry. They went east, but I lost track. She had help. Some big guy. Holding the kid.” His eyes are angry: this happened on their watch. “He wasn’t moving but we know they want him alive. He’ll be okay.”

For now, Chris thinks but does not say. They all hear it anyway. For now.

Robert puts a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll ask around. Find out where Amber goes. Places she might’ve visited.”

Paul--Sebastian’s slender tidy friend from the old-fashioned gentleman’s magic club--appears at his other side. “That can’t’ve been planned.”

“No,” Chris says. “It wasn’t.”

“So someone took him.” Paul glances from face to face. “You were hoping to draw someone out. With our Sebastian.”

“Don’t,” Robert offers, conciliatory. “Don’t blame the FBI. Sebastian wanted to help. He told me.”

“The disappearances.” Paul sighs, scrubs a hand over his face. He’s spent nights with Sebastian, Chris remembers suddenly: if not the same tidal-wave love that Chris feels, there’s nevertheless genuine affection and anguish carving lines in his expression. “Of course he would. Can I--I’m nothing much of a magician really, not the way he is, and I’m not good in a fight, but--the club has a lot of records. Notes. Keeping an eye on the practice and practitioners. Old establishment sort of things. Those records go back over a century; would they be of any help?”

Chris looks at Scarlett; they both look at Mackie. Chris decides, “Maybe. Especially if you’ve got anything on someone who would’ve arrived here about a decade ago, who would’ve been asking about people with power...Scar, go with him. Tell me if you find anything.”

She nods. “What’ll you be doing?”

“I’ll go back to Robert’s. You said you might know some of Amber’s friends, people to talk to--” Robert also nods. “--and I’ll go back over all our notes. Looking for patterns. Who he took, and from where, at least as much as we know, in case he’s got a particular affinity for some spots.”

“I’ll run that girl--Amber, you said?--through our databases,” Mackie offers. “She might have some connections.”

Missions assigned, they split up. Grasping at straws. Following training. Hunting for leads. Searching for anything that’ll mean they haven’t, he hasn’t, failed Sebastian on all counts.

In Robert’s car, on the way to that scone-scented coffee-shop, he thinks for a brief second that he never should’ve let Sebastian take this chance. But that’s wrong. Robert’s said it: Sebastian wanted to help. Would’ve never listened if Chris had given him an order. Had already been trying to care for his friends.

Sebastian had made a choice. Chris can’t deny him that, not when that’s the person Sebastian is: brave and wonderful and shining like a hero. Beautiful inside and out. Magical. A champion.

A champion.

He recalls that word. Some sort of memory kicks his brain, trying to get attention. He’d said--no, Sebastian had said--

Sebastian had, laughing, teasing, suggested that Chris himself might be a champion. Not precisely magical, but magic-sensitive: the knight to his winter-eyed mage. A protector. Intuitive. And--that key word again-- _ sensitive _ . Able to...sense magic.

Could he?

Can he?

Would anyone even know how he could try? Sebastian’d only come across the term in years-ago frantic research. None of his cheerful magpie friends had ever mentioned it, not even when Seb had revealed Chris’s presence. 

Would he be able to pick out Sebastian specifically, even if he could sense magic at all? And how far ahead is he jumping, when all he’s got consists of a stray thought his beloved illusionist once had, and his own clumsy wishful thinking?

But he is thinking. He can’t not.

Sebastian, he thinks. Vows, really. A promise in his bones. Sebastian, I’m here. I’ll find you. If you’re hurt I’ll help you, if you’re lost I’ll find you, I’ll bring you home.

I’ll tell you I love you. I’ll say it out loud. 

I’ll cheer you on and hold your hand and love you. In bed. While eating your chicken soup. Always.

Sebastian loves being his, being cherished, he knows. He thinks that maybe the words won’t be unwelcome. He thinks that maybe Sebastian cares about him too, maybe enough to someday turn into love if Chris is lucky, and maybe Sebastian hasn’t spoken because he thinks that Chris will leave, Christopher Evans the FBI Special Agent, on a case, kissing - and solidifying his bond with - his useful asset.

Sebastian is wrong about this. Chris will find him, and will tell him so, and will watch those pale eyes get indignant at the suggestion of getting something wrong, and then Chris will kiss him again, everywhere, exploring handcuffs and knots and blindfolds and kinky flexibility as requested.

Most of all Chris will not leave him. The future might be uncertain, a spinning top of fear and determination and awareness that time’s slipping away, but that’s a sure bet: Chris won’t leave Sebastian. Career or no career, this ordeal, the aftermath. Whatever comes. 

He sends a text to Scarlett:  _ also look up anything they have on magical champions/sensitives/psychics. _

She answers  _ got it _ without asking why, because she trusts him that it’ll be relevant. She trusts him. Like Sebastian had.

He closes his eyes and lets the pain shatter him for five seconds, no more, and then he pulls it into fierce steel, and pulls himself into action. Sebastian needs him. And Chris Evans needs Sebastian, his bright-eyed brilliant illusionist, the piece of his soul he’s only just found, at his side.

 

For someone who never gets sick, never gets hurt, Sebastian is feeling a heavy dose of both right now. The hurt, he thinks, comes from a stirring in the back of a darkened space, the world moving beneath him and big hands holding him down. It’s the taste of blood in his otherwise cotton-filled mouth and a pain that throbs in time with his heartbeat.

It’s raining. Or not rain, but water, freezing cold and cascading down on him from above. He’s so cold that he can’t feel…anything. Not toes that barely brush the ground beneath him, not his arms wrenched above his head, wrapped in iron far unkinder than Chris’s playful handcuffs. He feels cast out of his own body, unable to control the waves of sickness that roll up from his stomach, or the brutal, incessant pounding of his pulse against his skull. 

He’s never hurt like this before. Never been so helpless. Even before, even then. A frightened teenager facing down monsters in his bedroom had been better equipped to defend himself than Sebastian is now. At least then he had that warmth under his skin, that wonderful effervescence that’s always been nestled in his ribcage, as vital to living as the beat of his heart. His magic isn’t something physical, not like his lungs or his eyes or his skin. He can’t reach out and touch it, can’t see it or smell it or taste it, but it’s always been there, ready to catch him when he needs it most. Even before he unlocked it. Before he had a name for it or even considered thinking of one. 

Now, it feels as separate from him as his mind does from his body. An injured, whimpering thing that wants so badly to do what it always has - to protect, to cherish - but can’t. Sebastian wants to soothe it. Recognizes that that want is something he craves for himself as well. 

He’s  _ never _ hurt like this before. He doesn’t know how. Pain isn’t something he is used to. It’s not something he knows how to handle. 

He’s not ashamed of the sob that sticks in his throat, or the tears that never appear from under a soaked blindfold. He’s hurting and he wants it to stop. He wants Chris’s arms around him, warm and comforting and safe. 

He wants Chris, full stop. 

The fall of water around him is so heavy and so loud that he doesn’t hear anyone approach. He can’t see beyond the darkness he’s trapped in and flinches violently when something rusted and old and stiff creaks and squeaks. Water stops, and there is a hand on his face. 

“Careful, careful!” He knows that voice. He cringes away, bare feet scrabbling against cold, wet stone. He doesn’t get far. 

Those fingers are large and rough, but not overly harsh when they tug wet fabric from his mouth and press a straw between his lips. “Drink,” the voice says. “You need to stay hydrated.”

The order strikes him as funny. He’s soaked to the bone. But the water tastes sweet, like Gatorade or something sporty and fruity and cold. He drinks because he knows he needs to build up his strength. The drugs are still in his system, the sickness and the cold are sapping every last hope of strength from his body. His magic is still huddled and crying, hidden away in a place he can’t reach it. 

“I knew it was you the moment I saw you,” the voice says. Sebastian can’t see from behind the blindfold, but his memory paints a vivid enough picture of who is holding him. “That you were the one.” He lets Sebastian drink until the very last drop, then removes the straw. 

And Sebastian wants to say so many things. Wants to shout and swear and demand to know where the others are, where Amber is. All he manages is a pathetic, “No.”

“I can sense it,” the man says. “Your magic. I can feel it under my skin. Not strong, just a tingle really. I’ve spent my whole life looking for you.”

A champion, Sebastian thinks wildly. Real, not just a story. As real as he is. Not very powerful, not very  _ good _ , but real. 

“We’re two halves of the same whole,” madness sounds so much more terrifying now he is old enough to recognize it. “Your power, my strength. There’s nothing we can’t do together. The whole world is going to be ours for the taking.”

Sebastian shakes his head. Tries again to put some distance between them. Without the constant ice of the water, feeling is slowly creeping back into his arms, his shoulders. The tears in his eyes are practically burning, now. “No,” he says again. Like it might make a difference. “No, I won’t.”

Strong fingers hold his mouth open and push heavy, soaking fabric back into his mouth. There’s a sound like fingers snapping and the fabric is the only thing to hold back his scream as the chains around his wrist tighten, jerk, and he’s lifted off the ground completely. 

“You will,” fingers stroke his cheek in a sick parody of affection. “I’m your champion, you’re my Magician. We’re bound together: it’s in our blood.” Another snap of fingers, another rusty, agonizing creak of metal. The water returns in an ice-stab torrent, and Sebastian starts to cry in earnest. “You just need some time to adjust,” the voice says, fading now, quiet. He’s either leaving, or Sebastian is. “In a few days, you’ll forget why you ever said no.”


	8. telepathic communication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which help is on the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again, now that I'm home from England! *waves* We're nearing the end here, or at least closer to it! And thank you for reading along!
> 
> Warnings for: mind games, kidnapping, asphyxiation. Not super-graphic, but obviously Not Good for poor Sebastian. But Chris is on the way!

Chris feels ridiculous, but does not say so. Does not roll his eyes and say no.

He will do anything, anything, to get Sebastian back safely. Including this.

 _This_ means sitting naked on the floor of the back room of Robert’s coffee shop, the fingertips of his left hand wrapped in one of Sebastian’s scarves, his right brushing a hastily printed map of the city. The scents of mocha and cinnamon and willowbark and rosemary drift through the room; the coffee’s not required for hasty cobbled-together magical rituals, but they’re all drinking it, and the warmth is nice. At least he’s got a blanket between his unclothed self and the floor.

“You know,” Mackie says, “under literally any other circumstances I’d be taking _all_ the videos, believe me…"

Chris glares.

Robert glances up at them across a curl of old paper: not quite remonstrating, Chris has the impression he’d be teasing too if the situation weren’t so dire, but--

But.

“Okay,” he says. His voice scrapes rough on its way out. Struggling past the fractured edges of his heart. “What do I have to do?”

He’d thought there’d be more debate over his role. Paul and young slim Tom and a giant blond Viking coincidentally also named Chris had collectively turned up with exactly one book and three letters, all impressively antique, ranging from a flowing nineteenth-century _by the way Cassandra Bennett says she wants to marry her mother’s champion, which as you can imagine is utterly ridiculous in terms of diluting the magical line, he’s barely even a proper sensitive_ to a heavyhanded chapter-long doleful meditation, published in the grand old year of nineteen-twenty, on champions who were not up to performing their proper roles, who lacked sensitivity, who failed to be good partners and readers, not developing their intuition in the service of their particular magicians.

While fascinating, none of this tells him how to _be_ a champion. How to be what Sebastian needs.

When the blond Viking had asked why the materials, Chris had said, wincing at his own suggestion, “Sebastian said--he thought I might be--”

“Oh,” Robert had said, “well, in that case,” and everyone seems to be assuming now that that’s fine, Sebastian would know, Sebastian knows about magic.

Sebastian does not know everything about magic. Sebastian, by his own admission, has spent years trying very hard _not_ to learn about his magic. Not to reveal himself.

Mackie’s research has turned up nothing in FBI databases. No clues as to where Amber might have gone, might be meeting a kidnapper. No leads.

Chris will try anything. No matter how insane. A week ago magic hadn’t been real either.

He hasn’t quite managed to wrap his head around how much his world has changed since then. No time to think. Not yet. That’s for the future, compartmentalized, rolled into a tiny ball and not gone but set neatly on a shelf in his mind. He’ll have the _what the hell am I, are we, is this_ freak-out later, if it’s still relevant by then. Scarlett and Mackie have both individually informed him that he’s got a hell of a lot of explaining to do later, centering around the fact that he hadn’t told them magic might be running around the world, but they’re taking it in stride for now too. Professionally focused.

Paul’s book suggests anchors - hence Sebastian’s scarf - and purity and a magical workroom. Chris isn’t sure how to achieve purity and that’s a wildly lost cause anyway if it means virginity, but the magicians among them have decided that this might mean no artificial items, objects, or fabrics. Which is why the nudity. He’s not strictly sure this is necessary, but he’s not going to argue.

They don’t have a real magical workroom, not the kind medieval elemental magicians and alchemists would’ve employed; nobody here’s a sorcerer. Nobody here is Sebastian, and Seb’s never used a proper workroom, not since Chris has known him. They’ve settled for the coffee-shop back room. Sebastian likes coffee. Magicians congregate here.

His bare legs are kind of cold.

He tries, “Um, somebody? Ideas?”

Robert flips a page. One of the other letters is in French. Robert’s languages are the best. “Focus on him. Just…I don’t know, sort of…think only of him. Try not to…um, try not to allow the cloudy thoughts in.”

“What?”

“That’s what it says! Oh, wait, I think I know what he means. If you’re worried, if you’re distracted, it won’t work as well. You’re supposed to be a sort of…divining rod. Finding magic. But to find a specific person you have to fill your thoughts with that person, with what you’re looking for, not your own, um, anxious self.”

Chris right now is a horribly anxious self. Sebastian, alone with a man who’s been after him for years - a man who’d been willing to inflict pain, trauma, horror, upon a scared teenager--

He doesn’t know how to set that aside. He worries. Who he is. His heart.

His heart. Sebastian.

His heart, with Sebastian, feels lighter. More free. Opened up and running toward newfound horizons. Laughing, magic in eyes and hands and kisses.

He takes a breath. Lets it go.

He lets everything go: the room, his racing pulse, the chill of the air.

He focuses.

It’s like the clarity of FBI marksman training, like the narrowing-in on a lead, like the long-ago sensation of a paintbrush in his hand and an image in his head. Art, while the world falls to the wayside and only the vision remains.

He’s kissed Sebastian in a hotel room and in a borrowed billionaire’s home and outside under streaming sunlight, under skies like blue banners, exultant.

He _knows_ Sebastian. Not every piece, not yet, not whether he sings along to classic rock or nineties punk in the car, not how he feels about camping trips beside shimmer-spray waterfalls. But other pieces, true pieces: a boy, a story, trust in his hands, chocolate and coffee in a kiss, quicksilver magical dancing on air and chicken soup recipes from faraway lands, glittering determination to rescue friends and save people, a warmth nestled into bed alongside him, a startled happiness when Chris offers warmth right back, and heartbreaking eagerness in his arms.

He knows Sebastian.

Warmth tugs at his fingertips. At his soul.

The sensation fades, altering: not changing in presence, he knows that heartbeat because he’s felt it under hands, at wrists, at Seb’s slender throat, but not warm. Cold.

Cold like sleet and city rain. Cold like ceaseless black-fringed torrents: icy tears of a broken world.

Chris stops breathing. He _can’t_ breathe. He’s breathing water--

He’s in the dark, he _is_ dark, dark and dim and scared and frozen, and he’s hurting - he’d never known what hurting was, not in truth, not like this, he doesn’t _get_ hurt--

He’s alone, the way he’s always alone, the way he’s known deep down that he’ll be alone - Chris will look for him, of course Chris will look, a gesture born out of guilt and out of a need to complete the mission, because this is a mission and Sebastian’s an asset and Chris is a hero and that’s what heroes do, bright and shining, they don’t come home to boys made of shadow with tarnished pasts, he knows that, he knows, and the weight hits like a tidal wave--

He’s weak enough to wish for a moment, only for a moment, and the weakness hurts even more--

 _No!_ Chris shouts the word, screams it, throws it like a golden spear. _No, Seb, I’m here, can’t you hear me? I’m here FOR YOU--_

Sebastian’s crying now. In a small hushed place, tortured, pulling away. Sparks flicker inside him, oddly muted, slow as if drugged. He should be iridescent, gold and silver, dazzling.

 _Sebastian,_ Chris whispers.

 _No,_ Sebastian thinks, less a thought than a frightened stubborn emotion, clinging to what seems rational. _No, it’s not real. You’re a trick. You’re not Chris. Chris can’t do this. I only ever said it because I wanted--I thought maybe there was a reason you’d found me, a reason you might--you’re not real._

_I AM!_

_He’d say that._ Sebastian’s attention’s drifting. Terrifyingly weak. How badly is he hurt? Chris can’t tell and is starting to feel the bottom drop out of the universe. _Chris would say--but HE would too, he’s already said it, the only real thing…_

He. The Magician. Getting into Sebastian’s head. Hurting Sebastian.

Someone in the background’s fussing, “Chris, your hand--wait, let me--” They do not matter.

 _He’s reality,_ Sebastian says dreamily. _He says he’s my champion. The only one there is. The only ones. Us. A pair. He’s been looking for me. Going through people…Of course I’m saying no, but how can you say no to reality? You can’t, can you…I think I’m going to die._

_No you’re fucking not!_

_You’re not real, sorry._ Sebastian’s breathing’s shallow. Water-drenched. Not as aware of the cold. This is not a good sign.

 _Come on,_ Chris shouts, _you told me yourself there’s a lot you don’t know, be, um, flexible about reality, okay?_ and keeps part of his attention with Sebastian, breathing with him, trying to intangibly shore up fraying edges, to stave off the unraveling. The rest of him flings FBI-trained senses and observational skills around...wherever they are. Where Sebastian is. Where he’s landed. Concrete. Old brick. A basement? A tunnel? Old city, anyway - buried, but near water--

Something darker and insidious dances at the side of perception. Not a presence, a ghost: spectral and nasty but harmless, a residue or a memory of powerful ugly magic. He doesn’t know how he knows.

 _It’s not a nice place. You should go, even if you’re not real._ Sebastian. Still trying to save him. To save everyone: _Some_ _of them are dead,_ Sebastian goes on, _in the other room…rooms?…but he says some of them survived. None of them are me, they were all disappointments, but they might be useful. To him. To us. Whatever he wants us to be. If you’re a friendly hallucination you might try to help them._

Chris is crying now too. Unchecked emotion, raw as his broken heart. Sebastian sounds so resigned. Not in the sense of giving in--Sebastian will never do that, will never be the partner of a kidnapper and killer--but equally final: Sebastian does not expect to be saved, not by anyone and not by Chris, even as he continues to say no.

 _Please,_ he tries, shattered. _It’s Chris. I’m real._

 _Of course you are,_ Sebastian says kindly: humoring him. _I believe in ghosts, you know, or presences anyway, like feeling magic, like the impressions that linger from a spell, or a kiss. So you should go, if you're real. Be safe._

This is Sebastian’s heart: brave and scared and compassionate, light shot through with radiant veins of power and kindness and knowledge of the darker places of the world, built into strength. Even when Sebastian has no strength left to give.

Chris loves him. Chris can feel that heart like a burning opal, a gemstone, a flame to be cupped in both hands and protected.

It’s dwindling. Wavering.

He says, _I’m getting you out of here._

 _Go on, then._ Sebastian doesn’t know him. Doesn’t _see_ him. Doesn’t think he’ll come back.

Is grateful that this little ghost-presence, who’d wandered into this ugly place and reminded him so achingly of his Chris, will run and be safe.

Chris swallows against the pain in his heart, his chest, his whole world. It grows and elongates and _becomes_ the world. Crushing him. Drowning him. The way Sebastian is--

Other pain glances across his cheek, quick and lucid; he opens both eyes. Scarlett’s kneeling beside him, hand raised.

He tries to talk. His voice is clogged. His throat needs a second. “He…I think he’s…” God. “Still alive.” His fingers hurt. He looks at his hand. He’s been trying to dig fingernails through the map into the floor. It’s a mess.

But that’s a place. Not exactly an address--obscured by crumples and blood--but a location. A location narrowed to within a block, anyway.

“Hey,” Paul says, leaning in, “that’s where the old Aleister Crowley residence was, correct? Or still is? I thought it was renovated, but…”

“Magical centers.” Robert’s face is pale. “ _Dark_ magical centers. Of course. There won’t be much left--Crowley was an idiot, so there never was--but it’s _a_ center, anyway. And for someone trying to raise power, to bind power…”

“It’s a good guess, at the very least.”

Scarlett says, “Give me your hand,” and starts sticking bandages on his fingers. It’s not bad; they’re not necessary. She seems to think otherwise.

“Magical centers,” Mackie says, shaking his head. “Okay, so, what do we do? If Chris can do magic--”

“Chris can’t do magic, he’s only sensitive, a sort of seeker, a finder-of--”

“Traditionally a good champion would work with a magician, seeking out new power, training--”

Chris has been quiet for a minute. Chris is trying to process. Scarlett’s handing him clothing and he pulls it on absentmindedly.

He found Sebastian: triumph rings through his body, echoes of rainbowy extrasensory elation. He did that. He can _do_ this.

He can do magic. Sort of. Sensing and seeking out magic, at least.

Sebastian’s alone. With injured magic. Possibly dying. Certainly it’d felt that way.

The horror battles the triumph. They call it a draw. Until he’s got Sebastian in his arms. Until they’re safe. Together.

He’s very sure he can’t do whatever that was again immediately. Maybe later, but not now. He’s exhausted, enervated, ravenous and dizzy. Sebastian’s scarf is just a scarf, hugging his other hand. Sebastian didn’t recognize him.

But that’s okay. Or it will be okay. He’ll make it be okay. They know where to go. Following his heart.

His heart, his case, his training: they all point to the same place. Assorted magicians and FBI agents gaze at him; he realizes that he’s on his feet, poised to move, and they’re watching him the way they would a general.

He says, “The Magician’s a champion,” and they don’t quite understand; they look mildly baffled or even more distressed, envisioning what a warped version might want with the only real magician any of them know.

He explains, “That means he’s not a magician, he can’t do magic, only feel it, he’s human, he’s only human,” and they get it: they’re not going after someone like Sebastian, they’re going after someone they know how to handle.

Scarlett says, “Good thing I brought a ton of tac gear,” and grins.

Chris nods at her, at them all, here on his side, on Sebastian’s side; and says, “Then suit up, and let’s go.”

 

Sebastian is certain that he’s losing his grip on reality. He’s adapted well enough to levitation, to teleportation, to stopping a man’s heart with a _thought_ , but there has to be a line somewhere, and in no world, not even one so strange and nonsensical as his, is it a good thing to be hearing voices.

Or even just one voice.

A part of him wants it back, if only because it sounds like Chris. And because it is echoingly, terrifyingly lonely in his head right now. He’s a fairly solitary person by fault of habit, but necessity not desire is what drives that. He likes people. He likes being _around_ people. He likes company. Craves it. But he’s alone now. Alone always, when it counts.

He misses Chris.

He misses… god, he misses his mama. He doesn’t want to die without seeing either of them again. He doesn’t want to die alone in the dark, in the cold.

The desperate desire for company crawls in on itself defensively as the water stops again and his raw, frayed senses scream at the proximity of another body suddenly standing so close to his.

The crushing ache of isolation, or _him_? It’s hardly a choice.

“Please,” a second voice. Soft, female. Tearful. Amber? “Please, you’re killing him.”

“He has a choice to make.” It’s only his mind, not his body, that flinches at the sound of The Magician’s voice. Physically, he’s numb. He’s got nothing left to fight with.

“He’s so cold.” It takes a moment for touch of fingers against his skin to register. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt him.”

Sebastian is still blindfolded. He can’t _see_ Amber flinch and cower from the hand that lashes out with careless annoyance. A part of him feels it. Sparks rubbing together in anger at the mistreatment of a friend. He can’t protect her like this. He can’t do anything to stop the man who has hurt so many innocent people in his hunt for Sebastian.

He _could._ He could turn him inside-out on a whim. Thoughts of how take a glorious high-definition front place in his mind as Amber whimpers, pained, and something sparks inside him, francium and oxygen. It burns bright and fierce and short, and his knees hit the ground painfully.

He’s out of the chains. Loose. Free. The magic in his blood sings for a glorious second, and if he can just reach out again--

The fist that catches him unbalanced sends him sprawling. Something breaks - a bone too fragile in the face of such violence - and the sparks fizzle and die. The singing falls back into a frightened, muted silence.

The world is still dark and Sebastian has no way of knowing if he’s lost consciousness or not.

He can’t hear Amber any more. He can’t feel her presence, either.

But he knows he’s not alone. The Magician is still there. His hands hover over Sebastian’s skin, barely brushing but somehow sharp, slicing something deeper than skin. His touch hurts in ways that aren’t natural.

“I’ve been patient,” a voice by his ear says sorrowfully. “I’ve tried to let you come around to things in your own time. I don’t _like_ keeping you drugged, Sebastian, this isn’t enjoyable for me.”

The pain that has made up so much of the first few hours of his captivity flares to life again as his wrists are seized and used to drag him across the floor. The movement puts pressure on muscles and tendons already abused by hours of suspension and all Sebastian can do is sob as the rough floor rubs painfully against oversensitive skin.

“I wanted you to have a choice,” The Magician is either ignorant or indifferent to the pain that is overloading Sebastian’s senses. “I wanted you to see it for yourself. To feel it. I wanted to be gentle with you, Sebastian, but Special Agent Evans is creating all kinds of problems for the both of us.”

Sebastian starts to struggle at the sound of Chris’s name. It’s born more out of a fear for him than a genuine belief that Chris is going to charge through the doorway like a hero of old.

He won’t let The Magician hurt Chris. He’ll die before he lets that happen.

A steel capped shoe drives the air from his lungs and lights dance in the darkness Sebastian is trapped in as he chokes and shudders. The grip around his wrists loosens, then releases, but it is a freedom that lasts only seconds as strong hands transfer to his hair and he is dragged to his weak, unsteady feet.

The blindfold is pulled free and he sags into the arms that hold him as the sudden flare of light sends spikes of pulsing agony lacing through his head.

The Magician takes Sebastian’s shoulders and shakes him hard. “You’re not in a fairytale,” he growls. “Even if he does come for you, it’s not because he loves you. You’re a prize. A tool. A toy that the FBI will pick apart piece by piece until there is nothing left of you. They’ll bleed every last inch of your magic dry, and then they’ll strap you down to a lab table and cut you open until they find what makes you different.”

Sebastian can barely raise his head to shake it, but he tries. Chris would never let that happen. He would never--

“They’d probably make him Director, you know?” The Magician whispers. Now the lights have stopped dancing in front of his eyes, Sebastian can see his face clearly. Plain and unremarkable but for the coldest, cruelest eyes he’s ever seen. “If he brought you to them, just think what it would do for his career. Hell, they’d probably give him conjugals if he asked them.”

Sebastian’s protests are muffled by the gag still in his mouth, but the words are clear enough.

“I don’t know him?” The Magician laughs. “And you do? You’ve known him a week and I’m sure he made you feel special,” his voice softens and he cups Sebastian’s cheek with a tenderness that makes his stomach roll. “He was looking for me. He was using you to _find_ me. If he’d have gone back with nothing it would have been the end of his career.” He shakes his head. Sighing, he uses the edge of his thumb to brush away the tears rolling down Sebastian’s cheeks. “I should have found you sooner,” The Magician says. “I should never have left you so vulnerable to that kind of ruthlessness.”

Arms encircle him in a twisted parody of an embrace, holding fast as Sebastian tries to push him away.

“I was going to do this on your terms,” The Magician says sadly, “but I can’t risk him getting his hands on you again.” One arm stays wrapped around Sebastian’s back, solid and inescapable. He’s held fast as The Magician clamps his other hand over his mouth and nose and squeezes. “You’ll thank me when it’s done,” he says, serene and confident and terrifyingly serious.

Sebastian can hold his breath for over five minutes.

This time he holds out for nearly six before oblivion takes hold of him. The Magician doesn't look away once.

 

Chris expects a fight. Chris is ready for a fight. Their whole impromptu crew of angry illusionists and vacationing FBI agents is suited up and narrow-eyed and poised for a fight.

Chris is not prepared to get out of Mackie’s car, take two steps toward the old Crowley house across the street, and promptly wobble on his feet as his stomach tries to exit his mouth.

Every nerve ending yelps and lurches. They’re oversensitive and raw, and sensations feel wrong: black salt on a paper-cut, the rolling of a ship about to capsize, the memory of a blade in the gut.

“Chris?” Scarlett’s got a hand on his arm. “Chris!”

He blinks. He’s leaning on the car. The metal’s warm from sunlight. The brick of the building in front of them catches sunlight too, but seems to swallow it up, drinking it like blood. It’s a greedy building. Bloated and selfish. He doesn’t know how he can tell. But he can.

When he blinks again it looks perfectly ordinary: dilapidated old New York structure, currently unoccupied despite sitting at what should be a desirable location, one board swinging loose and innocuous over a window.

The magicians in the group collectively glance at him, then at the house, then back at him; and it’d be funny if it weren’t so deadly serious: Sebastian’s in there.

Sebastian, and everyone else who’s gone missing. And the man responsible for those disappearances.

“So,” Robert says cheerily, “feeling a bit sensitive, are you? I mean, you _are_ one.”

Chris glares weakly.

Mackie snickers, which breaks the tension a little.

Because this is New York, nobody’s batting an eye at the bristling task force outside the unoccupied building. The corner shop behind them has pointedly closed its windows. They’ve parked across the street, but they’re not really trying for subtle; they don’t have time. Sebastian doesn’t have time. It’s possible someone else picked up Chris’s intrusion. No way to know.

Chris takes a deep breath, squares shoulders, looks at his team. “We get everyone out first. Priority one. Then we worry about capture. Clear?”

“Sure,” Scarlett says, “boss,” rather pointed but amused--they’re equals as far as FBI rank--and Mackie and the magicians give varying degrees of ironic but accepting salutes.

“And you listen if I say something doesn’t feel right.” He’s not had these new senses long. But he trusts them. He trusts himself, and this feels like a part of himself, a part he’d never known existed that’s bloomed and spread petals and flowered. Because of Sebastian, because of possibilities.

They all nod, which is both impressive and concerning--he wonders what they think of him now, of this newfound skill--but that’s a question for the future. “Okay. Mackie, Paul, and whoever else you need, cover the back alley. Scarlett and everybody else, we’re going in the front.”

A few of the team melts away, prepared to handle the back-alley route, under fire-escape metal and city sky. The rest come with him, right up to the front door, which--

Which opens. Chris balances awkwardly--he’d been ready to kick it down--and then forgets awkwardness in the face of rage, because--

_“You.”_

“Evans!” That’s Scarlett’s voice, her hand on his arm. “Enough!”

It’s not enough. It’s not enough and he’s angry, he’s hurt and betrayed, and _Sebastian_ had been betrayed, and Amber’s pretty eyes are wide and terrified as he keeps her pinned against the wall inside--

“I opened the door for you,” she whispers, and Chris hears his own growl, because if she’s free to do that then she’s free to choose--

He knows how many ways there are to take away freedom to choose. He knows that Sebastian knows as well, Sebastian who’s lost a former life and built a new one out of quicksilver hands and gifts to homeless families.

His grip loosens.

“He’s still alive.” Her face is bruised, he notices. And she’s been crying. “I thought--I don’t know. I thought it would be different. When they were together.”

Scarlett shuts the door behind them. Her voice is gentle but firm. Chris is shaking and cannot be gentle, so it’s a good thing Scarlett’s taken over the talking. “You thought what would be different?”

“I was one of the first. The ones he wanted.” She looks around at them all: defiant, pleading, betrayed in turn. “I can do--not what Seb can do. But a little. The I’m-not-here trick. Getting next to people. Getting them to give me stuff. It never lasts. But it was enough--first he told me he wanted me, that I was special.” Her voice wobbles over the word: a lonely street kid, a kid with just enough real power to know that it is power, someone finally seeing as much. “But I wasn’t good enough. He was looking for someone real, he said. He told us to call him The Magician because that’s what he wanted. Magic.””

“Us.”

“I was going to leave.” She shrugs. There’s a rip at the sleeve of her coat, the kind made by a pull away from a grabbing hand. “If he didn’t want me, fuck him. But he said he had my little brother--he does, I’ve seen him, Ben, I mean--and so I was gonna bring him all the street people, the magicians, anyone he thought might be _his_ person.”

“His,” Chris breathes. Belatedly, he’s got comms open to the back; Mackie’s listening in. They’ll need to know whether to trust her.

“That’s how he always says it. His person. Meant to be.” She shrugs again. “Some of them were celebrities, even, y’know? Harry Gold, after a show. Some of them were just people. Some of them--the ones with just enough power to survive the cold and the water and the whatever--are still in there.”

“Well, shit,” Scarlett murmurs, eyebrows up. “The Harry Gold case."

“I thought it’d be okay. I thought, if he had what he wanted--” She’s looking at Chris. “I didn’t know it was Sebastian. I swear. And--it’s not okay, it’s not--I think he’s going to die. Sebastian. The Magician said he’d listen, he’d know they were meant to be and he’d accept it--but he’s not. It’s wrong. Sebastian’s--”

“Sebastian’s _what_ ,” Chris manages.

“I don’t know.” She shivers. “He felt so cold. He felt--he got loose for a second, when--” Fingers float up: to the bruise on her face. “He wanted to help me, I think, but it was scary too, because he was scared and angry and I think he’s hallucinating or something and--he really could do anything. With that power. The Magician says that’s why he needs a champion. A human anchor. He said--he said he was going to make sure Sebastian realized that, how much he needs him…”

“Where,” Chris scrapes out. He can only manage single words. Too much crashing around his brain. Breaking of the universe. Wound too tight and snapping under strain.

“The basement. The back room.” She gulps. “Everyone else is upstairs. I can’t open the chains, I’ve tried.”

“We’ll worry about that,” Robert says evenly, with angry performance-artist fire underneath.

“Is there anything we should know?” Scarlett asks. “Traps, sensors, anything?”

“Not that I know about?” Despite everything, she’s strong; she’s got her chin up, not unafraid--they all are afraid, that’s not a question--but having made a choice. “He’s kind of an arrogant dick. He bought the building--he’s got money, I don’t know how, probably from his other victims--and he doesn’t think anyone’ll care enough about street magicians to find him. And he can’t do magic.”

“But you can.”

“Yeah, and I let you in.”

“Okay,” Chris says. “Okay. You’re coming with us.”

She swallows, and nods.

They head for the basement. Robert and the blond Viking and a few others run upstairs to work some sleight of hand on antique Victorian chains. Chris’s heart hurts, physically hurts. Exertion and that sinking sick sensation. This house. Amber’s words. Sebastian.

Sebastian who’s been tortured and cold and powerful enough to break free for an instant--who might not know who he is, or where, or whether newcomers are friends or tormentors--

Sebastian’s still alive. He holds on to that. He has to.

And he takes stairs three at a time.


	9. champions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chris arrives, Sebastian makes a choice, and ~~probably~~ no one dies today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We promise we didn't REALLY kill either Chris or Seb. I mean, not really. Er. Enjoy?

Sebastian does not feel like himself. He is awake, and he’s pretty sure he’s alive, but something’s wrong. Not physically--or, yes, physically, that too, he’s cold and sore and dizzy, lying on a flat hard floor, feeling beaten and exhausted and oddly transparent--but in his sense of self. His shape. His fit in the world.

He mentally checks himself over. He’s not restrained. He can move if he wants to. His limbs feel strangely weightless, airy, as if running with light instead of blood. But they’ll stir if he asks. His head feels strange too. Nothing he can pinpoint. Loose and tremulous. Imminent as a storm, electric and billowing.

He opens both eyes.

“You’re awake.” The Magician’s sitting beside him. The man looks enraptured. Transported. And is cradling one of his own hands with the other. “How do you feel?”

Sebastian is himself enough to give nothing away. He rolls his head that direction. He’s not blindfolded or gagged. He’s simply lying on the floor of what seems like a forgotten basement, a cavern, a disaster of time-cluttered magical workroom. A few books, pentagrams, decks of cards both Tarot and not, lie around collecting dust. Water’s dripping from broken pipes. He knows that water.

“I do apologize for the crudeness. You were magnificent.”

Attention caught by the word, Sebastian wrenches his wandering gaze back that way. “What did you do to me?”

“Well, I killed you, of course.”

Sebastian looks down at himself. Raises an eyebrow. Covers up abrupt disorientation with the sarcasm in his expression. He’s not entirely sure this is an incorrect statement.

“Oh, you didn’t let me. That was the test, you know. It is for everyone.” The man actually beams at him. “Such power. Instinctive. Keeping yourself alive. Your heart stopped, and then it came back, _so_ strong, and you knocked me away from you. You broke my hand when you did.”

Sebastian glances at the appendage in question. No: not broken. Being carried gingerly, even reverently, but unbroken. He’s trying not to think about the part when he apparently died, or not-died, or un-died, or whatever. He _didn’t_ die. His magic fought back.

Maybe he _can’t_ die. He’s the magically undead. He wants to giggle, somewhat hysterically.

“Oh, yes.” The Magician inches closer. Strokes his hair. That feels strange as well. Affection. Kindness. It’s confusing, as is the way the man looks at him with admiration. “You healed me.”

“I did _what_.”

“I was in pain, and I told you that I was in pain because of you, while I held you, and you healed me.”

“No,” Sebastian says, pushing himself up on elbows. They seem cloudy but cooperate. He’s wearing clothes that aren’t his but feel new and fit comfortably: pajama pants and a soft white cotton t-shirt. He wonders who bought them, and when. “No.”

“I assure you that you did. Because you know, as I know, that you need me.”

“No.” But he _…_ remembers something like that, doesn’t he? Foggy, swimming through a haze of rainbow-tinted delirium, drowning in light…

He’d known he was dying. He’d felt peaceful, relaxed, free of burdens. But he hadn’t _wanted_ to give up. He hadn’t been ready to give in.

And some loud tiny golden core of him had been shouting, a fierce small wild animal; it’d thrown itself against the smothering weight again and again and again, until it’d broken free and he’d collapsed into white-hot scattered stars, unthinking radiant pieces with only one imperative: survive, be healed, be real.

He’d floated dreamily to the surface of the star-sea, and had heard someone in pain, and had known he’d caused pain; that was all he’d known, and he was sorry about that, and the thought was the deed, when the someone was holding him.

The Magician had held him. As he’d died, and - and what? Woken up?

It’d meant something to be held. Even while his rational brain’s absolutely sickened by the idea, his skin remembers the comfort. His body murmurs low suggestions: _he was right, you know, about you…he knew you could take this, and he was right…he believed in what you could be, even if his methods were wrong, and he did hold you through it, and couldn’t you show him a better way, if all he wants in return is to hold you more…_

Chris, he thinks. The name bobs up from unexpected blue-green depths. Chris Evans. His federal agent. His Chris.

But Chris hadn’t saved him when he was dying. Hadn’t come for him. Hadn’t held him. Hadn’t _known_ him. Not exactly this way.

That thought feels wrong too, a puzzle-piece he’d thought was one shape but turned out to not quite fit. He frowns at it in his head.

“I’m here,” The Magician says, sitting next to him. “I’m here for you. To help you.”

Sebastian, stray thought splintering off the dreamstuff that’s his brain, asks, “What’s your name?”

“Oh, no, my name doesn’t matter.” With a smile, with a hand on his shoulder. “It never has. I gave it up, you see. To look for you. I have been looking for such a long time. No, don’t move too fast, you don’t need to strain yourself.”

Sebastian lets out a breath that could’ve been a laugh, pulling himself into a sitting position, tucking legs under himself. Everything seems to work, though there’s that odd unanchored feeling, not clumsy but newborn, as if his edges are fraying into gossamer, forgetting where he ends and the world begins. If he tries he can feel that world, bright and sharp and vibrant, resonating like a hundred tunes at once: jazz and rock and opera and country and elegant classical symphonies twirling and colliding and dancing merrily and messily in and around each other, each person tuned to a different key; he can breathe in the thrum of the earth beneath it all, slow and steady and overjoyed at the life moving upon it, while back in this room the drips of water keep falling one by one in mesmerizing clarity…

He lifts a hand. Turns it over. Fingers. Skin. Tendons. Bones. Rainbows stirring underneath.

The Magician’s smiling at him, tinged with awe.

He says, “The others. The ones you took.”

“They’ll serve us - you. As they should.”

Sebastian considers this. That idea _…_ that doesn’t feel right either. Other people might not see the world the way he does, but that doesn’t mean they’re born to serve.

He thinks of wildflowers, and a wallet, and money given to those needing it.

He says, carefully, “What if they don’t want to? Serve us.”

“But how could they not? What you are, what we are, together - you’re remarkable.” The man looks genuinely perplexed. Sebastian does not know how to answer.

Chris Evans has kissed him and put him on his knees and reminded him that he belongs with someone. But--but he does belong with someone, someone who knows him, and all his delirious flights of fancy won’t make Chris into something magical, a part of his world--

Chris needs him to solve a case. Chris told him as much. No - Chris and Scarlett said as much, but Chris didn’t argue, didn’t want anything to do with him after. Chris said _I know_ when Scarlett said words about civilians and difficulties _…_

He died, if this story is true, and from the way he feels he thinks it might be, and he died scared and cold and unrescued.

He’s alive now, though. He wants to see Chris.

He remembers wanting to see Chris. Wanting to see his mother. But Chris didn’t come.

The Magician had held him. Had watched over him until he woke.

His head hurts.

“You sit there,” offers The Magician, his champion, the person who’d known exactly what he could be, “and I’ll get you some coffee, you do like coffee, I’m aware--”

The basement door crashes open.

“No,” The Magician says, vastly annoyed, “no, honestly, not _now--_ ”

“Sebastian,” Chris Evans says.

Chris Evans is tall and sturdy and beautiful. Chris Evans fills up the world and shines like the sun: golden, glowing, anxious and wanting the world to be radiant too. Chris Evans lights up a gloomy basement room like sparklers, like art, like life, and has other people at his back. Sebastian’s chest aches, an odd little yearning that direction.

“Sebastian,” Chris says again, tightly, “are you okay?”

Of course Chris is asking. He’s sitting on the floor with the man they’ve been so afraid of sitting beside him. The water drips more in the background: bleeding from broken human-made pipes.

He says, “I’m alive,” and of course Chris doesn’t get the humor, only tensing up further, taut with emotion: Chris hasn’t been here.

Chris didn’t save him.

“Sebastian,” Chris suggests, “move away from him.” A gun shines black and dark in his hand; it’s not quite pointed at anyone yet. FBI issue. Special Agent at work. “We’re getting everyone else out, they’re--most of them are--okay, they’re okay, it worked, it did work, I heard you, I found you. I’m here. You’re safe now.”

Sebastian, sitting on the grimy basement floor, feeling particles of dirt at his fingertips like small mysteries of life, snippets of the universe and history, answers, “Actually I’m dead.”

Chris’s face goes white.

“I’m not exactly dead,” Sebastian amends. “Not now. That was you. In my head. I thought it wasn’t real.”

“It was real.” Chris’s voice trembles. “I’m real. I’m--you told me once I was magic-sensitive. A champion. Yours. Are you hurt, can you get up--”

“You’re not a champion.” The Magician’s on his feet. Hissing. He’s never been memorable to look at: unremarkable, neither old nor young, a man. A man who’s changed the world. “You might have some small sensitivity, but you know nothing. You’ve never known anything. You’re a clumsy puppy faced with power you can’t comprehend. _I_ found him. _I_ made him see what he could be. What we can be. And you stand there with your gun and pretend to be important.”

Amber’s at Chris’s back, biting her lip. Her eyes are huge. Sebastian wonders about the bruise on her face. He can feel the heat, the blood under the surface; he thinks that he could fix it if he touched it, could draw forth and dissipate pain. He does not blame her for anything; she argued on his behalf, he remembers. He says to her, “Can I help?”

Amber makes a tiny sound, not a yes or a no but a cracked jewel of astonished sound. That’s pretty too.

Chris whispers his name. Chris is gazing at him with an expression Sebastian can’t read, wholly new, broken open and full of emotion. “What did he do to you? Sebastian--Seb, it’s me, it’s Chris. You saved me on a fire escape. You made chicken soup for us. Please.”

“I remember you,” Sebastian agrees. “What will you do with me? You’ve solved your case. You don’t need me.”

“He doesn’t,” The Magician concurs. “He’ll go back to the FBI as a hero. If you go with him you’ll be a curiosity. A lab rat. And you don’t need him. He wasn’t here for you. I was.”

“No.” Utter horror paints Chris’s face in stark basement light. He has such an expressive face, Sebastian muses. Faint boyish freckles, kind lips, long eyelashes that quiver with pain. “No, don’t listen--I _am_ here. I came for you. Yeah, we solved the case, but I don’t care about that. I mean I do care, I care about finding everybody, but I--Sebastian, I’m here for _you_. I told you I’d keep you safe. I’ll always keep you safe. I found you. I found magic, I found myself, _because_ of you. I love you!”

“No you don’t!” The Magician shouts. “I do!”

The words, all those words, burst and hang in the air like exploded fireworks. Sebastian’s head hurts a lot; his heart hurts as well, exhausted and bewildered. Chris said--but Chris wants him to listen, wants him to come along and obey; Chris would say anything--

He’s wanted to hear those words. He’s wanted--if it were real, if his disoriented distant hallucination might’ve been real, if Chris might be meant for him, his anchor to this place and time--

The Magician and Chris are both talking. Shouting. Too many words. They spill and rattle and throb. “Stop,” he says, and then he says it again: “ _Stop_.”

Chris stops, mouth open. The Magician stops.

 _Everyone_ stops. Amber, Scarlett, the knot of his huge-eyed friends at Chris’s back, a falling water-drop.

“Oh,” Sebastian says hastily, “sorry, I didn’t mean that, don’t--” and he doesn’t quite know what he does but the world exhales and shakes itself out and the water-drop splashes into the growing pool of its companions beneath. He scrubs hands over his face. “I’m sorry. I’m not--I’m still getting used to this. Being this. Being alive. I don’t know. You said you love me.”

“I do,” Chris whispers. His eyes are very wide and not precisely fearless, but the fear isn’t for himself. “I do. I have since--since you won a twenty off me and lifted my wallet and then gave it back. With more money. Sebastian, I love you.”

Chris keeps saying his name. This is a negotiation tactic, he understands: establishing a connection, and reminding him of who he is. But that doesn’t mean it’s not real.

Establishing a connection. Chris would do that for an asset. But Chris doesn’t need to say those particular words. Other words would do. Other forms of appeal. The FBI doesn’t train negotiators to say I love you.

Sebastian hasn’t ever said the words aloud. Only in his own head. Chris doesn’t know he’s thought them.

Chris has no reason to say _I love you_ now. No reason other than the obvious.

Chris isn’t scared of him. Never has been. Not even now, gazing at him, heart written on that face and plainly worn. Scared _for_ him, instead. And here, and present, and real.

Sebastian gets up from the floor. The air tastes like water and stale sorcery; he’d do a great many things for a cup of coffee and one of Robert’s scones. He comes over to stand in front of Chris, trailing fingers through the air along the way just to feel it. His bare toes learn the floor, the hardness and grit of it. “You love me.”

“I love you.” Chris’s eyes are wet. “I should’ve said it before. I should’ve--I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was supposed to protect you. And you’re hurt.”

“I’m okay.” He’s not, but he can handle it. This is more important. Chris is more important. “You don’t need to apologize. It’s not your fault.”

“I do,” Amber puts in unexpectedly from behind Chris’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, Sebastian.”

“I know. Forgiven.” He finds himself smiling, crooked, unexpected. That feels more like himself. “Chris, there’s something I should tell you.”

“That you’re amazing,” Chris says. “That you--you’re special. I always knew. Sebastian the Magnificent.” Too amazing for me, says his voice. Too wonderful, say his eyes. Made of magic. I know.

“You saved me,” Sebastian says. “You save me. You--you make me want to do more. To be more. To fly. And then you remind me that I’m a person. Your person. I love you, Chris Evans. My Special Agent. My champion.”

“You--”

“Hi,” Sebastian says, and kisses him. Chris tastes like relief and joy. Chris kisses like the soul of the universe, warm and big and strong, and Chris’s arms go around him.

“No,” The Magician says, “no--” and they’re not listening, but they should be, they should be hearing--

Something flickers through the piece of Sebastian’s consciousness that’s not being swept up in Chris, and he turns, but The Magician’s behind him already, moving with surprising speed--

“You’re _not his_ ,” the man says, “ _I_ searched for you, _I_ helped you, _I_ gave you this, everything we can be, you’ll _see--_ ” and a flash goes off, not magic but a trick, a powder, an explosion--

Chris has turned himself into a shield around Sebastian, protection, that’s nice, but Chris’s gun’s in The Magician’s hands and unwavering--

 _“No!”_ Sebastian shouts, and the world splits in two, his voice and a bolt of sheer thrumming invisible power and the crack of a gunshot--

He’s killed before. He doesn’t kill now. He gathers up his cold burning rage that anyone, much less this man, would dare to hurt Chris, and flings it like an icicle into a brain and a soul.

The Magician is, or would’ve been, a champion. Magic-sensitive. A magician’s partner, other half, anchor to humanity. Sebastian can feel the stunted warped thin light of that purpose, that power, perverted and twisted.

He burns it out. He wields protective fury like a scalpel, precise and ruthless. Time doesn’t pass, or it extends, or it waits for him; he’s not sure. He’s focused. And this will be the worst of it: The Magician will always know, will have a faint sense of something missing, something more, something he used to be able to sense or taste or feel in the air. But he’ll never know what that’s been. The death of a magician, Sebastian thinks, and feels no remorse.

When he’s done the man in front of him stares back, vacant and puzzled, and drops the gun. Scarlett’s got him in handcuffs in an eyeblink.

“He’ll remember kidnapping everyone,” Sebastian explains, drained and exhilarated, turning to Chris, “he’ll even confess, but he’ll remember nothing about real magic, or magicians, or--”

Chris falls. Hands over his stomach. Red.

Everyone’s talking again, Robert and Paul framed in the doorway of the basement, babbling shouts echoing off walls as Chris slides to the floor. Amber tries to help catch him; the best they can do is a softer landing. Scarlett’s running back to them, calling an ambulance--

Someone’s saying no. Someone’s calling Chris’s name. Himself. Fingers wet with blood. Chris’s blood. “No, you can’t--you can’t, you came for me, you saved me, Chris, I love you, please--”

“Love you,” Chris breathes, or tries to, and coughs. More red.

“I’m _here_ ,” Sebastian pleads. “Chris--”

“Your champion,” Chris sighs, and his eyes slip shut.

“No,” Sebastian says--to the blood, to the universe, to this cosmic injustice. “No.”

He is a magician. He is the only real magician. He is Sebastian the Magnificent, because Chris calls him that and laughs with happiness, and he will stand up to the universe and demand that it give him his champion back.

He kneels at Chris’s side, in Chris’s blood, basement dirt and terrified faces as his witnesses. He’s already tired. He’s been reborn once today and he’s taken memories and stripped a man’s power and rediscovered his own soul. With Chris’s help.

It’s not a choice.

The universe listens. The stars, the spinning earth, the dance of gravity and power: they know he can move among them. He can ask a fire escape to stretch out a helping hand, or walk on air made briefly solid, and he will be kind in turn, as much as he can offer. He is a part of everything.

The universe wants a price. Balance. An exchange.

That’s not a choice either. It’s a yes. For Chris, yes.

The gunshot wound does not transfer to his own body. It’s not that dramatic. But he feels the effects. The weakening, the fading. He stretches himself brittle and transparent, spread to insubstantial gauze on a breeze, a pencil-sketch of a boy who’s got hands pressed over the heart of the man he loves.

He’s felt this lightness once before. He came back that time.

Chris is breathing again. He is glad of that.

Sebastian takes a breath too. It’s strangely difficult. He’s not sure his lungs are still lungs.

Chris’s eyelashes flutter. Not awake yet, but soon. He’s alive. He’s fine.

Sebastian cannot remember how to breathe a second time, and does not feel himself collapsing, only registering dimly the living warmth of Chris’s body under his. And hushed velvet darkness welcomes him with gentle hands.

 

Someone is crying. Chris opens his eyes and realizes that the someone is nearly everyone. Scarlett is dry-eyed through force of professionalism alone, but Sebastian’s friends can’t manage the same. They’re--

“Sebastian!” Several hands try to push him back, throwing words like ‘shot’ and ‘dying’ and ‘so much blood’ around like they should mean something to Chris. The only thing, only person, who means anything to Chris right now is crumpled beside him, a puppet finally cut loose from his strings.

Chris throws off the hands that want to help and gathers Sebastian in his arms. Sebastian is alive. He says as much to the crying friends around them, but on the inside, Chris wants to scream. He can’t _feel_ Sebastian the way he has been able to, the fact of his presence inside Chris’s heart only known now in the face of the gaping absence left behind. There had been something similar on the sidewalk, when he felt his heart stopping and the world give way to nothing - when Sebastian died. When he was _murdered_ by the Magician.

Chris’s fingers dig into Sebastian’s pale skin. He came back then. That nothingness was so fleeting.

He’ll come back again. He has to. The other half of Chris’s soul is missing and he has no idea how to live without it.

Mackie takes charge. Scarlett’s holding it together in ways no one else is, but she’s still shocked, still _stunned_. By what Sebastian has done. To the Magician, and to Chris.

When someone tries to take Sebastian from Chris’s arms, the floor trembles violently. Not Chris’s doing, but some small part of Sebastian that is left responding in the face of Chris’s fear and anger. It’s the only sign that things might, maybe, one day be okay.

So the cavalry sweeps in around them, rescuing the men and women and _children_ locked up like animals in the upper rooms of the building. Chris is dimly aware of hearing Amber cry as she takes a small boy into her arms and rocks him back and forth. A part of him is relieved for her. Another, nastier part, thinks that Sebastian wouldn’t even be here now if not for her.

“I’ve got you,” Chris says, stroking back Sebastian’s wet hair as the world moves at speed around them. There’s so much light and sound and commotion but throughout it all, Chris stays put. On the floor. With Sebastian in his arms.

They’ll want to take him to a hospital soon. Chris knows that there’s not a hospital in the country that can help him.

“You saved my life,” Chris whispers. He moves his hand down to cup Sebastian’s cheek, gentle and adoring. “Sebastian the Magnificent. I came for you. I promised I would. He was wrong about you. About us. I love you. I won’t let anyone take you away from me. I’ll keep you safe.”

He’ll take Sebastian far away and build him a tower he can protect himself from the world in. A Magician and his Champion. Two parts of a whole.

Something instinctual inside him says that this is wrong. Him being here, alive and whole and covered in his own blood but not bleeding. The same part of him that managed to reach out and into Sebastian’s mind now stirs again. _Wrong_ , it says. _All wrong._ He’s supposed to protect Sebastian. He can feel it in his bones. In his _soul._ He’s supposed to protect his Magician or die trying. A Champion’s purpose in life.

They try and take Sebastian again, and the whole building threatens to break apart.

“Christopher!” Robert? Is that Robert? Chris can’t take his eyes off Sebastian. Not for a second. Not knowing that he’s failed him so many times already. “He can’t stay here. Come on now. You want to take him someplace nicer, no? You don’t want to make him spend anymore time here than he needs to.”

In the place he was tortured and murdered and reborn and sacrificed. No. No, Robert is right. He can’t stay here.

He stirs, stands, Sebastian still in his arms. They leave the dark, damp basement behind and step out into a world that feels dimmer than it did before.


	10. magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ll make it a rule. No near death experiences. No near death anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done! Thanks for reading. *hugs everyone*

The hospital is inevitable. There’s no sign that Sebastian is going to wake up, no indication that he’s just waiting for the right time. He’s breathing on his own, but eventually he’s going to need food and water and that’s not something they can do themselves.

The might of the FBI has descended, just as Chris promised it would, and they are quickly surrounded by people who are willing to act first, ask questions when it’s time to file the paperwork. No one says anything about magic - at least not the real kind - and while Chris tunes out three separate lectures from various superiors, there is no indication that they see Sebastian as anything other than a civilian caught up in a madman’s game. An innocent victim. Chris doesn’t even argue. Sebastian _was_ innocent when this all started.

They tell the doctors that Sebastian was kidnapped. Tortured. All true things, and though he heals himself well enough that the bruises are only faint things, his body is so wrecked by the exhaustion of what it’s done to himself that it is easy to convince them of the care that needs to be taken. And through it all, Chris doesn’t leave his side. He threatens to quit when ordered to, then threatens to hurt anyone who tries to make him when told that he _can’t just quit, you stubborn bastard._  It takes Anthony and Scarlett running interference and some clever misdirection from Robert and Paul before he’s finally granted some peace.

Settling down beside the stark white hospital bed, Chris takes Sebastian’s hand and entwines their fingers together. “I’m here,” he promises. “I’ll be here as long as it takes."

 

Sebastian wants to answer. Sebastian means to answer. Sebastian also has no idea how long it’s been, or how long it might continue to be, or even _where_ it’s been. He’s fairly certain the where is a hospital, but whether that’s in New York or at some FBI facility or halfway across the country, he couldn’t say.

He thinks that Chris has been talking to him for a long time. He looks at the growth of beard darkening hollower cheeks, the shadows under Chris’s eyes. Some equipment beeps, electronic steadiness. Sebastian’s body’s alive, if unmoving.

Sebastian, unfortunately, is not precisely _in_ his body.

He’s not sure that he even counts as _dis_ embodied exactly. He can’t move far. When he tries to reach out he doesn’t have fingers; he’s a wisp, a phantom, a memory on a palimpsest. He can look around, he can see Chris and himself and ominous medically-inclined equipment. He’s tethered: by something that feels like Chris’s hand in his, Chris’s pain tangled in his heart.

It’d be nice if he could move the actual hand. Squeeze back. Open his own eyes.

He’s also awfully tired. He thinks he’s been asleep for a while. He thinks he’s been awake before, in and out, hovering the way he is now. He can’t quite recall.

Chris is awake too and talking, low-voiced, determined. Chris is beautiful; Sebastian’s chest, intangible though it is at the moment, aches with too many emotions. Chris is alive. Chris is here with him. Chris loves him. Chris is devastated and broken-voiced and drawn thin because of him, because of worry, because hospital chairs are too tiny and coffee isn’t a replacement for food and Sebastian can’t seem to make himself _wake the hell up properly._

The universe shivers and shimmers. His magic shivers and shimmers: wrapped in opalescent healing tissue, instinct tells him, a knowledge that rises both slow and sudden, in his head all along. It’s a protective cocoon. Safety while rebuilding. Self-defense.

He’s pretty sure, at this point, that he’s not going to die. Would’ve happened already. Would’ve felt more wrong. Not what the universe wants from him.

His magic murmurs, tender and pale as drained rainbows, delicate but willing if he asks for aid. He soothes it, soothes himself, with an intangible touch. He’s _not_ going to die, so he’s not going to ask. Not yet, anyway, though he might have to revisit the question if intangibility turns out to be an ongoing condition. He can’t leave Chris. He won’t leave Chris.

He settles above himself on the bed. He listens. He tries to get stronger, and he listens.

“…you know you can wake up any time,” Chris is saying, “you’re safe, I’ve got you, no one’ll hurt you--not ever, Seb, not ever again, I swear--” His voice shakes. Finds a defense in humor. “Maybe you know that already, maybe you’re just fucking with me, God, you’re a brat, Seb--it’s not funny, y’know. It’s not--please come back to me. Please.”

 _I’m trying!_ Sebastian yells, without sound. He glares at his body. Slack in sleep, guarded by modern medicine, his body ignores him.

“It’s been four days,” Chris says. “Maybe you know that too, I don’t know, I’m just telling you. In case you want to know. Four days, and, um, we got everyone home safe--I know I told you yesterday, but if you don’t say anything I’ll keep telling you--and I guess we’re getting commendations or something, although I’m kinda also getting yelled at, never mind that though, you don’t need to worry.”

Sebastian scowls. Mutters noiselessly: _I want to worry. Also I’m a magician. I can fix things. For you._

If he could wake up he could fix things. He can’t seem to _do_ anything.

And he’s so, so tired.

The hospital room flickers, blinks in place, drains like water through a sieve, then stabilizes. Sebastian’s aware of strain now, as if he’s been holding the bones of the world in place without knowing.

“Sometimes I think you can hear me,” Chris whispers. “Sometimes--like now, right now I think--but sometimes it’s so quiet, I’m trying, I’ve been trying, maybe I’m doing it wrong, I’m not good at this, Seb, I’m sorry--”

Sebastian’s frustration spills over. An IV stand rattles. Window-blinds, closed against invading afternoon light, snap up.

Chris freezes. “Seb? Sebastian?”

Sebastian catches breath-- _why,_ he wonders dizzily, he doesn’t need to breathe, he hasn’t got _lungs_ \--and tries not to move. He’s curled up around his magic, around the deep radiant core of himself, which whimpers. Of course it does: he’s asked it to walk on broken legs. He’d be crying--it _hurts_ , dammit--if he could.

Chris exhales slowly. Sebastian cannot bear to look at his expression, and makes himself look. Makes himself know how badly he’s lifted and wounded the hopes of the man he loves.

Chris closes both eyes. Opens them. Raw and yearning. Sunshine through long eyelashes like tears of gold. “I love you. I meant it when I said it. I _mean_ it. I should’ve said it so much sooner--I should’ve said--I’m saying it now. Every day. Every minute.” With an unsteady laugh: “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. You probably know that, too, don’t you? If you’re here. Watching. You’d know what to do. You’d have a plan.”

 _I don’t have any plans,_ Sebastian breathes silently. Exhaustion pulls at nonexistent bones. _I jump before I look. I land on my feet and flip playing-cards for paying gullible tourists. I fall in love with FBI agents. I never thought beyond the next month before you. I want all the months. With you._

“You save people,” Chris tells him, holding his hand in both big callused ones. “That’s who you are. And I--I need you to do that one more time, okay? I need you to save one more person. Yourself, Seb. Yourself. Please.”

Sebastian whispers Chris’s name, but he’s sliding; infinity comes up to cradle him, not black but soft and white and blurry, like falling into feathers, like becoming clouds.

The next time he becomes aware it’s with the fuzzy sensation of having overslept, or slept at the wrong time, or not when intended; he twitches into consciousness, yawns, stretches. Evening this time. Still not in his body. Dammit.

Anthony Mackie’s stopped by. Sebastian tunes in mid-sentence and mid-sandwich; Anthony’s brought enough for an army. “--the ceremony? I know, I know, you don’t give a damn, just thought you’d wanna know.”

“I don’t care about commendations.” Chris is eating, so that’s good; the reply comes out around a mouthful of Italian meat and cheese. “You and Scarlett go. I’m not leaving him.”

“You know, we can have anything we want right now. Heroes and all.”

“The only thing I want’s _not waking up.”_ With a set-down sandwich, a glance away. “Sorry. I feel so fucking useless, it’s been a fucking _week_ , and they say he’s physically fine and I _know_ he’s not and I can’t say how I know-- _I_ don’t even fucking know what I know!”

Anthony puts a hand on Chris’s shoulder. Chris’s chest’s going up and down, dinner forgotten.

“I’m sorry,” Chris says after a second. “I’m sorry. It’s just…”

“I know, man. I know.” Anthony pulls him into a hug, quick and affectionate. “He’s a good kid. Tough. Brave. Hell, he’s in love with you, and he can do goddamn magic. He’ll make it back to you.”

Chris swallows. Nods. Looks at his sandwich as if he’s forgotten what to do with bread and meat.

“What I meant,” Anthony diverts, “was, you thought about our idea at all? We’re in if you are.”

“I don’t know.” Chris sighs. “I don’t know. I can’t--I won’t make any decisions without him. I can’t.”

Decisions? Ideas? Sebastian, who is feeling a bit better but still easily worn out, scowls invisibly at Anthony. Pokes without much hope at a top slice of bread. Is pleasantly surprised.

Anthony stares at his bread. “That was _not_ on the floor a second ago.”

“I think he’s here,” Chris says. “I think--sometimes I think he’s here.”

“Oh, he’s here, and he’s not just a ghost, he’s an _asshole_ ghost.” Anthony glances around the room as if expecting Sebastian to be hiding in a monitor or overhead light. “I hope you heard that, kid. Magic and ghosts and the goddamn supernatural. Man, Evans, you know how to pick the weirdest cases.”

“You came when I called.”

“Always do. Think it over, get some sleep, and let me know, yeah? Scarlett’ll be by in the morning.”

“Thanks.”

Anthony waves a dismissive hand and ducks out the door, and as he does he mutters under his breath, “You better get on that waking up thing, kid, I don’t like losing friends.” Sebastian’s startled and pleased and tired enough to not try to toss the bread at him. Anthony called him a friend. He has friends.

They know his secret now--they know enough to be scared of him now--and they’re still his friends.

He drifts off this time with a feeling of shy happiness, while Chris picks at sandwich pieces, spots Anthony’s bread on the floor, and laughs.

His other friends stop by. Robert, Paul, Jeremy, Cobie, even Amber. They stay for a while; they do card tricks and entertain each other and pretend he can hear them; they send Chris off to change and shower. Sebastian’s room overflows with flowers, notes, trick coins, endless scarves, and love.

He wakes again in the night - a night, some night, might be the next or a week later - to dim silky indigo shadows and Chris whispering, “I love you, Sebastian. I love you so much. I’m here. I’ll always be here. As long as it takes. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I don’t know more. I don’t know how to be a champion. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, with magic and pretending I can save you and--I didn’t save you. I failed you. God, I failed you. I’m sorry. I’m--if you still want me I’ll do everything right from now on. If you come back to me, if you still even want--I’ll do anything. I’ll sit right here until you decide it’s time to open your eyes if you want. I’ll buy you coffee and scones. I’ll buy you a whole damn bookstore. I’ll take care of you _better_ this time. I swear I will, Seb, I swear, just please wake up, please, God, please.”

Nightglow pours across hospital bedding, the still forms of Sebastian’s own legs, the shape of Chris’s hands clutching his. The shine of tears.

“Please,” Chris says one more time, very small, and then drops his head to rest against their joined hands. His shoulders slump.

Sebastian tries. He does. He tries as hard as he ever has. He’s not himself yet. He knows how fragile he is, how bruised and battered inside--he didn’t _quite_ die this time, Chris hadn’t been entirely dead yet, but no healing comes without a cost, without energy, and he yanked his out and put it into someone else, and he’s paying for that, balancing the scales--but he can’t listen to this and do nothing. He _can’t_.

He can’t get back into his body. But he can move objects, can’t he?

He has more control than he’d had even with the sandwich. He can tell he does; he’s regaining the sense that’s always said _yes, go on, you can do this_ in his soul. Not a hundred percent, but enough.

It’ll have to be enough.

He looks at his hand, long limp fingers wrapped up in Chris’s grip and anguish. He makes them move.

Chris’s head jerks up. Sebastian winces, because Chris is looking at his face, but--

“Seb,” Chris says softly, and then, gingerly, so gingerly, stretching--clumsy and untrained and clutching a sense of _Sebastian Sebastian Sebastian_ that makes Seb himself flinch at the strength of the grip-- _Sebastian?_

 _Chris!_ Sebastian says, as the world flares up: shooting stars through the night. Painful, brilliant, coruscating, and he’s crying, they’re crying, they’re falling and burning and flying together. _Chris--!_

 _Seb, oh, Seb--_ Chris feels like impossible sunshine in ink-dark midnight. Chris hums like a beacon, like a destined other half, drowning in relief and crystalline joy. Chris glows.

_I’m here. Ow--not so tight--no, it’s okay, I’m here and you’re here--_

_Sorry sorry sorry, is that better, God,  I thought you were, I thought I’d--_

_I love you._

_I love you._ They both say it; they both spill over with it. Dazzling in the dark.

 _I’m okay,_ Sebastian says finally, weakly, aware that this is hurting: over-extension, over-use of himself, but aware as well that it’s healing in another way, his anchor and his guiding star, a goal to push himself toward. _I mean, I’m not OKAY. But I will be. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on with the poltergeist existence. I THINK it’ll fix itself on its own, but I don’t know. I’m in and out a lot. I think when you can’t feel me that’s why._

 _In and out?_ Chris pulses with distress: a heartbeat, protectiveness, worry. _Are you someplace else? Or--_

_Sleeping? Healing. Not awake. Getting better. I swear._

_You saved me._ So many emotions color those simple words. Laid bare and open.

_I’d do it again. And you’d do it for me, so don’t say you wouldn’t, Agent Christopher Evans. My Chris._

He feels rather than sees Chris nod. They both know.

Chris says gently, half-smiling, grave and wry, _my magician. Is this hurting you?_ He’s caught that twinge of not-quite-pain, then.

Sebastian, who cannot lie to his champion and wouldn’t outright do so in any case--maybe tease or mislead, but not lie--answers, _A little. Mostly it’s because I’m out of reserves, I think. Empty battery, or some other metaphor._

He knows as he admits it that he’s going to drop back into the white calming blankness soon. Even this is playing sleight-of-hand with his barely-gathered power: making it dance on the thinnest of ropes.

Chris, who knows this because Sebastian knows it, exhales: unhappy about further injury, but the joy overshadows that, for them both. _Rest. Please._

_Not going to have much of a choice. But I love you. I’m here, and I love you. And you’re wrong, you know._

_???_

_You said you didn’t save me._ Sebastian kisses him: a faint but certain echo of the kiss he’s planning to give his federal agent once he can. _But you did. After I--came back, that first time--you were there. You came for me. And you wanted to help. That was real, too, and I needed that. Someone who wanted to help. Someone real, and you made me want to be real too._

Chris sniffles, insofar as that’s possible in floating dreamy enchanted space. _Love you, Seb…_

_I think I’m going now. I’ll be back. I WILL be back._

_I’ll be here._

_YOU take care of yourself,_ Sebastian scolds, _eat the sandwiches Mackie keeps bringing you, and get some sleep--_

The warmth of Chris’s answering kiss, half-delirious from lifted weight, tremulous and bubbling over as sunrise, follows him this time. It keeps him company, nestled into his soul.

 

Chris has spent enough time in hospitals to know that nothing works like it does in the movies. People in comas don’t just open their eyes and smile, asleep one second and awake the next, and okay, Sebastian isn’t technically in a coma, but Chris has spent nearly two weeks preparing himself  for a slow, unsteady slog back to health.

He’s not expecting to go to the bathroom one afternoon and come back to find Sebastian sat up in bed, the book Chris has been reading to him propped up against his knee.

“This story is far more entertaining when you tell it,” Sebastian muses, “you have excellent dramatic timing.” There’s a twinkle in his eye when he says that and as soon as he’s officially fit and well Chris is putting him over his knee for being such a _brat_ , but, oh god…

Chris knocks over the chair he’s been camped on and throws himself down onto the bed next to Sebastian.

“Hi,” Sebastian says, smiling.

Chris, who has been dreaming of this moment for so long and has a list of fantasies the length of his arm, fails entirely to be suave or romantic or even coherent, and bursts into tears.

He tries to hide them from Sebastian, who has only just woken up, dammit, he doesn’t need _this_ , only to melt at the gentle touch to the side of his face.

“My poor champion,” he whispers, “I’m alright, really.”

A part of Chris wants to argue with him because really, Sebastian _died._ Twice, almost, and that’s before they even get into the things that The Magician did to him when he was in captivity, but the skin pressed against his own is warm and he can feel Sebastian’s heart beat steady and sure below the surface.

“You’re never doing that again,” Chris sniffs, drying his eyes with the back of his hand. There are too many wires and cables protruding from Sebastian’s body and he can’t just wrap him up in his arms and hold onto him forever, but he can take long fingers between his own and press kisses to their knuckles. “I’ll make it a rule. No near death experiences. No near death _anything_.”

“Promise,” Sebastian agrees, melting back against the bedding and clinging to Chris’s hand. “Can we go now?”

“You just woke up like five minutes ago,” Chris feels his spine straighten with worry because sure, Sebastian looks okay but what if he passes out again? What if he needs more time? “No.”

Sebastian pouts and his big eyes turn glossy. It takes every ounce of willpower he possesses not to give in.

“Not until the doctors see you,” he compromises. “And then…” he trails off, uncertain. It’s not like they have a home to go to. His is in Virginia but he can’t ask Sebastian to leave his city and his life behind, and as far as Chris knows, Sebastian doesn’t actually have anywhere that’s _his_. He asks, “Do you have someplace to go?” and kicks himself as Sebastian’s expression falls.

“Oh,” he says. “I mean. Yes, of course. I can…that is, if you don’t want--” He looks down at his hands, one still held firmly in Chris’s, and tears spill over.

“Stop, no, Sebastian, that’s not what I mean.” Chris is harsh when he should be gentle, rough when softness is what’s needed, but he won’t, can’t let Sebastian think even for a second that Chris wants him gone. “You know me,” he whispers, lifting Sebastian’s hand up and pressing it over his heart, “every single part of me. Do you think I could ever leave you?”

Sebastian sniffs, his cheeks red with embarrassment. “I know,” he whispers, “I didn’t mean to doubt you or anything. It’s just, he said…”

If killing the man wouldn’t be a kindness, Chris would rip The Magician apart from the balls up. Amber has shared what little she witnessed of Sebastian’s torture and Chris has seen parts of it in his own dreams while Sebastian slept, but he doubts he will ever really know everything that went on in that basement. Just see the damage it has done.

“He was wrong,” Chris says, as quietly and slowly as he can, desperate to emphasize the importance of what he is saying. “About everything. About you. About me. About us. I only mean that I don’t really know what you want, when we leave. Do you want to stay in New York? Or come with me to Virginia? Or we could go to Boston, or anywhere. Whatever you want.”

Sebastian hesitates, then looks up hopefully. “I want to see my mama,” he says, soft with childlike longing. “She’s safe now, isn’t she?”

“He’s gone,” Chris promises, “he can’t hurt you, or her, or anyone.” He pauses, stuck between the need to shelter Sebastian from becoming overwhelmed too quickly and the need to give him what he so badly wants. “I can send a car, if you like? Have her brought here?” Sebastian’s not been home since he was attacked there. Chris doesn’t know if taking him back to the site of The Magician’s first assault on his life will help or hinder at this point. 

But Sebastian shakes his head. “I don’t want her to see me like this,” he indicates the wires and tubes that have been keeping him fed the last few weeks. “She’ll only worry. We can… we can go see her? When they let me out?”

Chris leans in and kisses his fuzzy cheek. “You might want to shave first,” he teases. “But yes. I’ll take you there the minute they say it’s okay to go.”

“Good,” Sebastian blushes. “I want to introduce her to my boyfriend.” The words sound sure, but there is still a shadow in his eyes that Chris will happily spend the rest of his life dispelling.

“Oh so that’s it, is it? You just need my wheels? Where we picking this guy up from?”

“I take it back,” Sebastian sighs heavily, “I can’t possibly date someone with such a terrible sense of humor.”

Chris wants to answer, he honestly does, but Sebastian’s said _dating_ and so he sits there with a loopy grin while the word swings around his head on giddy flying trapezes. He says, “Even if I bring you a sandwich to bat around? Which was awesome, by the way.” In at least two ways. Hilarious, and also: Sebastian was _there_. Was himself.

And that answering smile tugs at the corners of lips, the corners of Chris’s heart, a kite making friends with the breeze. “It seemed like a good test of strength. Also, what was the idea? Something you and Agent Mackie were discussing.”

“Oh…um…you don’t need to worry yet--”

“Chris.”

Chris exhales, wraps Sebastian’s not-IV-occupied hand up in both of his, glances at the nurse who’s peeked in. Around his shoulder, Sebastian suggests, “Five minutes,” and that might be magic or simple sweet charm, but she nods and vanishes.

“Before you ask,” Sebastian observes, “it wasn’t. I think…I’m not sure I’m supposed to use it like that. Manipulating people. It feels too close to…what he did.” What he did to me, he doesn’t say. Chris can see it in his eyes, in that shadow: Sebastian believes in love and Chris and shining hope, but belief takes effort and rebuilding when it’s been elegantly cruelly stripped away. They’ll get there. That’s true, too. “In any case, tell me your idea. Or Mackie’s idea.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Chris plays with long graceful fingers in his, teasing them, toying with them; Seb smiles more and lets him. “I love your hands. I love you. So, um, I haven’t said yes yet and don’t think you have to say yes and, y’know, you just woke up, you might want to think about it for a while, maybe--”

“I _did_ wake up,” Sebastian points out, “and this is about us. Our future. And I love you holding my hand.”

Chris kisses his fingers for that. “Not letting go. So, um, we’re kinda famous now, solving cases and all? So Mackie and Scarlett thought, since magic _is_ real and there’s a whole damn world out there and crimes out there and good people out there, people we could help, maybe, if we can find them, and I can sort of find people, if I’m sensitive to, um, magic, and you could be a consultant or something and we could sort of do something?”

Sebastian blinks at him.

“Oh God,” Chris mourns, “that made no sense, did it, fuck me…” and collapses across Seb’s bed. He’s made things worse. He’s a trained agent. He’s in love. He should be better at everything, dammit.

“Oh,” Sebastian says delightedly, “the X-Files.”

Chris looks up.

“Not _exactly_ the X-Files,” Sebastian clarifies. “Unless you have proof that secret government conspiracies and aliens exist. But a kind of magical response division. Finding kids like--like Amber. Like me. Who need to know what they can do, and that they’re not on their own. We know there are more, now, even if they aren’t as strong as I am. And also…we can stop people like… _him_.”

“Yeah,” Chris says, slowly because he’s caught up in the spell: that voice weaving futures, and Seb’s fingers squeezing his.

“Yes.” Sebastian’s face is bright: a kind of astonished dawning of clarity, of certainty, of excitement. He looks not precisely like the boy he’d once been - too many scars for that - but like someone who remembers being that boy. Someone young again, and brilliant, and glorious: a playful magician who delights adoring throngs. “This feels right. Like something I’m meant to do. With what I can do, what I came back _to_ do. Helping people. With my champion.”

“Always,” Chris tells him, Chris promises, because Chris is certain too, and they can change the world the way he’d once hoped to upon joining the FBI, they can stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart and make each other stronger, every day. Young again, he thinks. Reborn, both of them. Becoming new and whole. “Always.”

“Do we get badges?” Sebastian inquires. His hair’s ruffled on one side and flat on the other, from sleep and from fingers run through it; Chris’s book’s lying on the bed by his knee, where it cheers them on. Sebastian’s eyes are as blue as a beckoning horizon. “Cool secret code names? Team logos and shiny superhero costumes?”

“No. Maybe _you_ get to dress up. At home. For me.” He thinks about Sebastian in costume, maybe in leather; he knows they don’t have a home yet, questions unanswered, but they _will_ have answers. They’ll come home. “We’ll make you a civilian consultant or liaison or whatever. Under my supervision. And you’re not doing anything strenuous yet. Not without medical clearance. And _my_ clearance.”

“I’m the all-powerful magician here,” Sebastian grumbles, without any apparent annoyance. “You’re _my_ champion. Although if your recommendations involve you and me and a bed, preferably not in a hospital…”

“I’m your champion,” Chris says. “I’m here to support you. To take care of you, Sebastian.” He waits a beat, lets raw honesty dissolve into a _different_ sort of honesty, adds, “Might involve a bed, though. Eventually. Once you’re up to it. And handcuffs. You know, testing your strength.”

And Sebastian smiles at him from this hospital bed, the spot where they’re sitting with joined hands, both battered and bruised but here and strong and healing; Sebastian, his magician, says thoughtfully, “You do know how much I like a challenge; what happens if we’re in bed with the handcuffs _and_ you’re in my head, sensing my emotions, I wonder?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So of course they build a life and a happily-ever-after out of saving people, and learning about magic, and meeting each other's families, and moving in together, eventually; Sebastian works with their newly recruited team to get them used to responding to magic, which is sometimes inadvertently hilarious, like the time everyone's guns turn into Starbucks cups because Seb's thinking about coffee...though Sebastian's obviously better at *actual* magical things, Chris is better at the one specific point of sensing and feeling magic, as a Champion, which is also occasionally hilarious, or at least the team thinks so ("You can't feel that? seriously?" "I can tie your shoelaces together with a thought, you know." "Yeah, but which one of us figured out that we needed to go to San Francisco, again?" "I'm not having sex with you tonight." "I packed those, um, _things_ you liked me using on you last time." "...we're having sex immediately after this mission.") (Mackie, in the background: "Saying 'things' doesn't help with the mental images, Evans, thank you.")...in the immediate aftermath, Sebastian recovers fairly quickly, but Chris still worries, of course, and devotes himself to ensuring that Seb is warm and safe and secure in the knowledge of being thoroughly cherished and adored and beloved, and also sometimes put over Chris's knee and spanked for being a brat, because, well, they both like that. :-)


End file.
